


If I Survive, Then I'll See You Tomorrow

by orphan_account



Series: Coffee Shops and Soulmates [1]
Category: Hawkeye (Comics), The Avengers (Marvel Movies)
Genre: Alternate Universe - Soulmates, Coffee Shops, F/F, F/M, Humor, M/M, Multi, Other Additional Tags to Be Added, POV Alternating, Platonic Soulmates, Pre-Serum Steve Rogers, Snark, Soulmate-Identifying Marks, we shall see
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2015-06-17
Updated: 2015-07-03
Packaged: 2018-04-04 21:40:40
Rating: Not Rated
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 20
Words: 52,513
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/4153977
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/orphan_account/pseuds/orphan_account
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>“Uh, that toaster appears to be on fire,” Tony says and Steve inwardly shoots himself. He’s been waiting for years to hear the words that were tattooed on his forearm in beautiful, loopy handwriting that resembled calligraphy more than someone’s writing.<br/>He turns around to find Natasha taking a picture of the fire on her phone, no doubt Instagraming the whole thing looking amused. He raises an indifferent eyebrow at them, this sort of thing happened way too much for him to give a damn.<br/>“Seriously though,” Metal Arm says, “that fire is getting bigger,” he gestures behind Steve. Damn, and there was the second line written on his arm.<br/>“I don’t get paid enough to care about this shit,” he says, sounding snippier than intended but too tired to care.</p>
            </blockquote>





	1. I don't get paid enough to deal with this

**Author's Note:**

  * For [GoodSourceofFiber](https://archiveofourown.org/users/GoodSourceofFiber/gifts).



> Okay, story time folks, so I used to work at a Tim Hortons (be still my Canadian heart) and dealing in customer service sucks, especially when you have to get up at five in the morning. So one day a raisin from one of the cinnamon raisin bagels fell into the toaster and caught on fire. So here I am, tired as fuck, and this toaster is spitting out flames behind me and I don't give two shits.  
> This customer was concerned though and they were like, "ugh, that toaster is on fire." I hear my supervisor running around trying to de-flame the toaster so I figure we're probably safe and even if we weren't I get to go home. It's a win win. So I look the customer dead in the eye and say, "I don't get paid enough to care about this shit." (I knew them, they were a regular customer)  
> And that, my friends, is the inspiration for this fanfiction.  
> Also worth it to note that I asked a friend for a name for this sucker and they gave me "coffee shits" because I label everything with "shits" at the end of it (I once sent a teacher an essay labeled Fifth Business Shits). Instead I took a line from Bullet by Hollywood Undead. Sorry about the long notes and enjoy!

There was about a million and one things Steve hated about his job, his boss and ignorant customers were high on that list. Getting up at the ass crack of dawn to get there was also high on that list. However there were days when work wasn’t absolutely shitty and today was one of them. Lucky for him all his favourite people were working today and Clint’s sass game was extra high. He supposed he would have noticed Tony Stark in the crowd if he hadn’t been too busy running his ass off and listening to Clint fuck with people but hey, the surprise made it all the better. “Sorry, what was that?” Clint asks the irritated customers in front of him for the third time. Steve knew damn well Clint knew what the two guys wanted, he was a master lip reader, but they were being jackasses so Clint was making them wait.

“Jesus fuck, are you deaf or something?” one of them snaps. Steve can practically see the glee in Clint’s eyes and he knows exactly where this is going.

Clint removes a hearing aid from his left ear and waves it around, “look buddy I have eighty percent hearing loss in both ears so mumbling in a crowded coffee shop makes it impossible to hear you,” he sticks the hearing aid back in, “so can you repeat your order louder please?” he says politely but forcefully. Steve has to think of dead kittens to keep himself from bursting out laughing at Clint’s antics.

The two assholes sputter apologies and repeat their order louder this time and Steve sets off to make it. He snickers while his back it turned and drops the two drinks in front of the neon coated fuckboys, making sure to give them a judgmental look that he knows will make them feel shitty. He’s tested it on Natasha and it’s practically impossible to make her feel guilty. The two slink off in shame and Clint snorts out laughter, “that was fucking great, they felt _so_ bad! They’re talking about how they were huge assholes now,” he claps his hands and laughs evilly.

“Barton, go on break and stop messing with the customers,” Peggy gives Clint a stern look. He sighs dramatically and leaves the floor. “What did he do?” Peggy asks, interested now that Clint can’t see her laugh. It was some sort of weird game they had, Clint did his damnedest to make Peggy laugh and Peggy refused to break.  He was fairly certain money was involved at this point. Steve tells her and she snorts loudly and covers her mouth with her hand, “oh my _god_ I wish I had seen that!” Steve grins and returns to the cash register to do his stupid job.

That’s when he sees Tony, some guy he was sure was his best friend Rhodey, and a third unknown person with a metal arm. Neat. He doesn’t bother to ask them what they want, they should know the drill, but no, all three of them were looking behind him.

“Uh, that toaster appears to be on fire,” Tony says and Steve inwardly shoots himself. He’s been waiting for years to hear the words that were tattooed on his forearm in beautiful, loopy handwriting that resembled calligraphy more than someone’s writing. It had been a nice daydream, at least until he realized he’d be at work when he heard them. Not to mention that he had two sentences, both involving the damn toaster so he knew for sure his soulmates had met beforehand. When he realized he’d be the third wheel he was significantly less excited by the prospect of a soulmate. The bond could have been platonic of course, but he had a feeling that it wasn’t. He wasn’t ready for his life to turn into a soap opera, certainly not one the media would make a spectacle out of. His life was a damn joke.

He turns around to find Natasha taking a picture of the fire on her phone, no doubt Instagraming the whole thing looking amused. He raises an indifferent eyebrow at them, this sort of thing happened way too much for him to give a damn.

“Seriously though,” Metal Arm says, “that fire is getting bigger,” he gestures behind Steve. Damn, and there was the second line written on his arm, the writing was block-y and all capitals, it was significantly less beautiful that Tony’s but more practical. He looks back to find Natasha no doubt praying that something bigger will catch so she could go home. Steve rolls his eyes, grabs a cup, fills it with water and throws it on the fire. Most of it goes out instantly so he leaves the rest to Nat, who now knows her dreams of going home are dashed.

“I don’t get paid enough to care about this shit,” he says, sounding snippier than intended but too tired to care.

Tony and the metal armed guy turn to each other with side smiles, “he doesn’t get paid enough to care about this shit!” they yell in sync. “Nice! We found the third, Pepper’s gunna be pissed that we managed to find two soulmates before she found one,” Tony says to Metal Arm.  

Rhodey looks at him likes grown a second head, “ _Pepper_ will be mad? You people…  You two shit heads manage to manage to find two people and I can’t even find one. What the hell is this?” Rhodey says, shaking his head and rolling his eyes in a way that must have been very familiar to him. Probably a common reaction around the two then.

“What do you want?” he asks again, doubly annoyed. Tony and Metal Arm look confused, probably because they expected some sort crazy reaction that T.V dramatizations push when soulmates meet each other. “Look, you’re my soulmates, I get it, you get it, now let’s get on with our day. I’m off at four, we can discuss it then. In the meantime I have assholes to serve, sweat to generate, and rent to pay. Which by the way… Nat! You’re paying rent, I refuse, plus I did it last month, and the three months before that.” He turns back to Tony and Co and raises an eyebrow. He hears Nat mumbling and slamming things in the background, no doubt pissed about having to deal with their irritating landlord.

He gestures for an order again when some asshole makes a comment about being slow. Steve would have happily told the asshole off but Tony whips around before he has the chance, “hey fuck head he just met his soulmate could you give him a minute? Besides, if you think you could do his job better than him get behind the counter and do it yourself,” he snaps.

“Three coffees, black,” Metal Arm says, glaring at the other two. Steve grinned, yeah; he could learn to like these two.

*

Steve and Sam get off at the same time so they catch the subway home together, chatting about Tony and the possibilities that could come from having him as a soulmate. “Okay, but what I don’t understand is how come we haven’t seen the other guy in the media, like we’ve seen Rhodey but not him, why?” Steve asks. Sam nods in agreement and tilts his head in question.

“Maybe he doesn’t like the media? It isn’t like anyone could blame the guy; Tony is the media’s favourite plaything. Remember when he went missing two years ago? I felt so bad for the guy when he came back to have several hundred cameras shoved up his nose.” Sam shakes his head in disgust. Steve had to agree, he wasn’t fond of Tony, not by a long shot, but the media fucking loved aggravating the guy’s anxiety to get a rise out of him. At one point it got bad enough that Tony had refused to leave Stark Tower, which only made the media circus grow. Steve wasn’t sure what happened to make it die down enough to make Tony leaving the Tower relatively safe but something happened, he assumed Pepper Potts, and eventually Tony started turning up at events again.

“I guess, but the media isn’t exactly avoidable, not with Tony anyways. Like you said he’s the media’s favourite plaything, so how the hell would it be possible to avoid them? Also did you even know Tony had a soulmate because I didn’t, how did _that_ fail to get into the media?” he asks. There is _no way_ that no one knew that Tony had a soulmate, that just wasn’t something you could hide. Obviously people close to Tony would know but Rhodey didn’t look out if place in public with Metal Arm so obviously he was in public with Tony often enough to not be odd or out of place. So why wasn’t he in the public eye? Not to mention Tony had that ridiculous ‘genius, playboy, billionaire, philanthropist’ image so his soulmate(s) being male would be a huge deal. But there was nothing and that was suspicious to say the least.

“Huh,” Sam says, “good point. Maybe you should ask,” he suggests.

“Yeah, okay, that so isn’t going to work. If they’ve gone out of their way to make sure no one knows Tony has a soulmate they aren’t about to disclose why that is to a complete stranger,” he says logically. Or at least he wouldn’t do that, it didn’t make sense to give up sensitive information over a trivial tattoo that supposedly meant he had a deep and meaningful connection with another person.

“Yeah but they're you’re soulmates,” Sam says. Steve looks at him like he’s stupid; he damn well knew that Steve didn’t believe that soulmates really meant anything. “Oh come on, Clint, Nat and Coulson worked out,” Sam points out.

Steve snorts, “That’s a crap success story and you know it. Do you not remember how they met?” That had been a night to remember. Clint had been out with Maria and Coulson after a day of work and Maria had dared Clint to smack the dangerous red head’s ass. Clint, the absolute moron, had taken the bet and swaggered over to smack her ass with a ‘hey sweetheart’ before Nat grabbed his arm, spun him around and slammed him into the bar, twice. And Clint… Clint had laughed and asked if he could by her a drink. That must have been the rest of Nat’s tattoo because she stopped smacking Clint off the bar and let him buy her a drink. Coulson, confused, had gone over a few minutes later and asked what the hell Clint had done to get her to stop smacking his head off the bar. That was obviously Nat’s second tattoo because she happily let him join the conversation. They bonded nicely after that.

“Aw come on, that’s cute!” Sam says, grinning. Steve rolls his eyes, that so is not cute… well maybe cute in a Nat/ Clint/ Coulson kind of way. Now they acted sickeningly sweet with each other because it made everyone else gag, mostly him.

“Thor and Jane! They’re adorable, everyone thinks so… well, except Loki but now he has Darcy so he isn’t so butthurt,” Sam says. Steve sighs, so Jane and Thor were adorable and even if he wasn’t fond of Loki he and Darcy were a good match.

“I’ll give you Jane and Thor; they are very good for each other. How the hell did Loki and Darcy meet though? I don’t think I ever got that story and honestly I’m curious because Darcy is hilarious. Their meeting has _got_ to be good.” The first time Steve had met her she swiped his Walking Dead mug and gave it back to him wrapped at Christmas. She was creative he’d give her that, plus he did give her a giant ball of Loki’s hair with googly eyes on it so he supposed he deserved his own swiped mug as a present.

“Oh man, you never heard their story? Okay, this is a wild one, so Darcy and Jane went to this concert and Thor made Loki go with her so they could bond or some shit that is equally Thor-like. Jane was supposed to pick him up but he was running late at work so he drove himself there and when he gets there he insults the band that was playing. So Darcy whips around and punches him in the face and tells him to shove an entire piano up his ass. I have no idea what Loki’s response was but halfway through the concert they ditched out and defiled Jane’s backseat, which is why she currently has Mjolnir.” Steve wrinkles his nose; Loki would, especially if he had his own car to defile. He was such an ass, he had no idea how Darcy put up with him.

“Why do all of our friends meet via assault?” he asks. Jane and Thor met when Jane was at some conference thing about astrology. She was waving her hands around enthusiastically while talking to another professor about her work when she smacked Thor in the face.

“No clue man, to be fair there was no assault with you and your two soulmates. And you met them both at the same times, that’s convenient,” Sam nudges his shoulder. Steve resisted the urge to roll his eyes; Sam was only trying to help after all. It was hardly his fault he hadn’t considered that his soulmates already had a relationship he was now going to be infringing upon and causing issues for. Even if he had met one of them before whoever got there last would still cause problems and Steve didn’t really want that.

“I don’t think arson counts as not assault,” Steve throws in as an afterthought. Sam raises an eyebrow, “come on man, we both know Nat set that fire.”  

*

Bucky had no issues tracking Steve down and even less trouble breaking into the house he seemed to share with his friends. Tony would shit if he knew how little security Steve had, it had taken him months to convince Tony that he didn’t need security and that was only because he beat up Tony’s entire security detail. It was kind of hard to argue he needed protection when he was more efficient than the protection Tony could provide, that didn’t mean Tony didn’t try. His inability to give up was simultaneously great and awful. On one hand it was Tony’s inability to give up on Bucky that had gotten him through coming home, but on the other hand Tony did stupid shit like try to take down entire terrorist organizations by himself, resulting in several governments trying to shoot him out of the sky for flying over restricted areas. If he thought Tony would give up attempts at being a super hero he’d take that damn suit and rip it apart, unfortunately Tony would build a better and more efficient one and continue his suicide mission. It was annoying that Tony insisted on looking out for other people but completely sacrificed his own safely to do so.

Steve’s room wasn’t difficult to pick out from the rest, even if he wasn’t a master at deciphering what objects belonged to who instinct would have told him. Soulmates weren’t something he believed in, at least not before Tony, but Tony had changed everything. He met Bucky once for a few seconds and spent nearly a year tracking him until he had found the building he had been squatting in at the time, that couldn’t have been an easy task. He knew damn well he was a ghost, almost impossible to track when he didn’t want to be found, yet Tony had managed. Imagine his surprise when he came back to his current dwelling to find a small bistro table set up with Tony sitting at it, feet on the table and swirling scotch in a crystal tumbler. He had looked so out of place in a suit that had to cost thousands and Bucky looked more like a homeless rat than a person. Tony hadn’t cared, and he hadn’t cared about his violent past either. They both had a lot of making up to do. He’d been grateful that Tony understood in a way he was sure no one ever could.

Steve’s room was neater than he expected, almost compulsively so. He got the distinct impression that if he moved something out of place Steve would know no matter how slightly it was moved. Instinct told him something was off about the situation but combing through Steve’s room didn’t yield anything suspicious, nor did anyone else’s room. The most suspicious thing he found was in the black and red room with the back widow spider and even then blades that had clearly been sharpened several times didn’t mean anything, not without further evidence. It was enough that he’d advise Tony to stay away if he thought he could, unfortunately there was no way in hell Tony would listen, not in this situation. He’d cite a million and one studies on soulmate bonds that dictate a lack of violence among soulmates along with a dozen other studies that dictated near immediate emotional bonds. He could counter argue that with the studies that said people with soul bonds who were murdered were most likely killed by their soulmates but he didn’t want to deal with whatever argument Tony countered that with.

In the end he called Tony and told him not to freak Steve out by doing something stupid like inviting Steve to live with them. It was so something Tony would do and it would frighten Steve off, his book collection and reaction to them had told Bucky more than enough to know what he thought of soul bonds. He really hopped he and Tony didn’t get into an argument about that, Steve seemed to be the stubborn type and Tony refused to let anything go until he was proven right. Most of the time that resulted in him doing something stupid and breaking a few rules but he was almost always right, it made arguing with him painful.

*

Tony has always been a little over enthusiastic about things he had a passion for and it almost always ended in disaster. Take his attempts to get his father’s attention, that failed and now Howard is dead. His love for designing things? Killed a shit ton of people. His attempt to run a company? Nearly ruined by his backstabbing quasi father figure, that was two attempts at living up to a father figure fucked and Obi was dead too. His love for Pepper? She nearly died trying to save his ass from Obi. His attempt to bust him and Yinsen out of those caves? Yinsen got killed.  Bucky? Well, that went mostly right but there was still a trail of bodies. The pattern was unmistakable, every time he cared about something someone died, so when things went mostly right with Bucky he really should have expected soulmate two to go south quick. He didn’t expect to ruin his chances in less than five seconds though.

“Seriously, Tony?” Bucky hisses. Okay, so maybe telling Steve he could quit his job and move in to the Tower in New York wasn’t the brightest idea he'd ever had but in his defence Steve lived with like six other people and worked in a coffee shop that he clearly hated. He was just trying to help. Steve had kicked them out immediately and Bucky had given him a look so he silently slunk away, feeling guilty but not exactly sure why.

“You couldn’t have just kept your damn mouth shut?” Bucky asks, clearly irritated with him.

“I was only trying to help!” he protests. It wasn’t like it was a crappy offering; he could provide a life far beyond anything Steve would be able to produce on his own.

“Tony, telling someone to uproot their entire life and move several states away is not helping, it’s fucking ridiculous. Lucky for you Rhodey just _happens_ to be Sam’s soulmate so Steve isn’t going to have much choice in dealing with you again. If you could refrain from your crazy antics for like five minutes that’d be great,” Bucky raises a judgmental eyebrow.

“Rhodey’s soulmate is a guy? Didn’t see that coming,” he mumbles. What was he supposed to say? It wasn’t like he could turn his personality off, he’d tried every alcohol there was and quite a few drugs too, and none of them really worked and they certainly didn’t allow him to forget his guilt. He’d tried damn hard, rest assured.

“Platonic soul bond probably, though Rhodey was relieved to find out he was attractive to gay guys. I’m not even sure why that matters to him but Sam assured him he was cute,” Bucky rolls his eyes. Initially Tony was sure that Bucky didn’t see how Rhodey, the strategic military man who liked things just so, could be friends with the chaotic, melodramatic, reckless mess that he was. It didn’t take long for him to see that Tony’s personality influenced Rhodey to be more reckless and Rhodey’s personality encouraged Tony to be less reckless. They worked well enough together that Tony was surprised they didn’t have a soul bond, but then he didn’t have a bond with Pepper either and she worked with him the same way Rhodey did.

“I don’t know either, but I guess my assurances weren’t good enough,” he sniffs, annoyed at Rhodey for not taking his opinion seriously.

Bucky snorts, “Tony if it has a pulse and it’s willing you’ll fuck it, of course Rhodey wouldn’t take you seriously.”

Tony makes a scandalized noise, “excuse you, I do have standards, thank you very much!” At least if he wasn’t drunk, he made very stupid decisions while drunk, he did good math though. Some of his best engineering was done drunk, not that he told investors that.

“Rhodey has told me all of the stories, you do not have standards unless alive and consensual counts and I count both of those things as strictly necessary,” Bucky makes a face. Tony was going to kick Rhodey’s ass, he paid him good money to keep the more… colourful stories to himself.

“I hope Rhodey knows that I am so glitter bombing his house for this, he was paid very well for his silence,” Tony says, dramatically placing his hand over his heart.

Bucky frowns, “I thought Rhodey was joking when he said he was paid to keep the worst of it quiet. Tony, you’ve fucked your way through almost every graduating class you’ve ever had, most of the world’s royalty provided they aren’t in a relationship, half the NFL, you totally hit on Barack and Michelle Obama, Rhodey told me about that time in Thailand, and Pepper. _Pepper_ , Tony, I can’t believe you managed to convince her that was a good idea,” Bucky says, almost scandalized that Pepper had slept with him. He would be offended but Bucky was right, Pep was way too good for him.

“Okay, first of all whatever Rhodey told you about Thailand is not true, the NFL will not admit to anything, and Pep and I shared an admittedly poorly thought out night. It will never happen again, she’s a lesbian and I’m not exactly itching to repeat that incident,” he winces. He’s had some very unexpected things happen to him but Pepper showing up on his doorstep in lingerie was in his top five weirdest things. She had been through a pretty nasty break up and he wasn’t about to sleep with her, he _did_ have morals regardless of what everyone else thought. So instead they had a very long talk, got black out drunk, and slept together anyways. The only reason they even knew that was because they had woken up cuddled together. They had been horrified and JARVIS caught it all on tape. He had apologized profusely, so had Pepper, at least until the part when Tony called Pepper by someone else’s name. He had told JARVIS to call Rhodey to tell him that he loved him, and that he deserved it. Thankfully he was redeemed when Pepper also called him by a different name. When he asked her if he should be embarrassed that she thought he was a woman she smacked him and made him swear to secrecy. Needless to say they both felt horribly embarrassed that they had gotten _that_ drunk and promptly given up alcohol.

“Rhodey said you’d deny Thailand, he said you’d deny Pepper too, but you’re always full of surprises. Now let’s go find Pepper so she can have a discussion about when it is and is not appropriate to do incredibly stupid things,” Bucky holds out his hand and he takes it, taking comfort in Bucky’s presence.

*

He wasn’t sure what encouraged him to do research on Tony Stark and he was not going to blame it on the stupid soul bond. He was in control of his damn actions, not some stupid tattoo. Regardless of why he decided researching Tony was a good idea he was more than a little surprised at what he found. Media and reality were way skewed if even ten percent of what he found was true. It didn’t take long to find that even Tony didn’t like his own image, not that he didn’t play into it quite a bit. It seemed that, like most rumours, the way he was portrayed in the media was rooted in truth, Tony _was_ a reckless melodramatic asshole but that was pretty much where any similarities to his media portrayal and reality stopped. Thankfully Tony wasn’t the quiet type and he was happy to correct people when they were wrong, unfortunately for him literally everything he said was taken out of context.

His research found that Tony was pansexual but the media only ever mentioned women and neglected literally everyone else. You’d think they’d enjoy the scandal but a few more minutes of research told him Tony wasn’t playing that game so when someone mentioned him being gay a few years ago he’d corrected them and said he was pansexual. Apparently that was no fun so the media went back to making shit up. That was basically how it seemed to go, Tony did something good, like paying women equally, and the media made up some dumb rumour about him. He was surprised to find that Tony paid everyone who worked for him livable wages, including those in other countries, child care was provided, people had full health benefits, maternity and paternity leave was provided, and a number of other things that made working for Stark Industries way less shitty than it could be. It was also news to find that he did most of those things before he nearly got killed in Afghanistan and came back with a conscience.

“Hey Nat, come here,” he yells to the room across from his. Nat, thankfully, had removed Clint a couple of hours ago, which removed the inevitable mess and he didn’t have to deal with Clint and Nat’s loud sex. To be fair Clint probably thought they were quiet but Nat just liked to torture him. Thankfully Coulson was too busy playing spy to join in most of the time. She opens the door and goes to pad over to his room but he holds up his hand, “you put that thing back in its cage, I want nothing to do with your deadly pets,” he says, gesturing to the black widow spider in her hand.

“You’re a wimp, Rogers,” she says but goes back into her room to put her idea of a pet back where it belongs.

“So what is it that’s interesting enough to interrupt my bonding time with Shelly,” she says. He wrinkles his nose but accepts that this was better than the tarantula she wanted initially. He hates spiders.

“Come look at this,” he says and pulls up a rather amusing video of Tony getting annoyed at some idiot journalist. Nat settles on his bed and he hits play on the video.

The video starts with Tony rolling his eyes at something the journalist said before someone started recording, which wasn’t promising for the person asking questions. The journalist than starts babbling on about Tony flirting with Michelle Obama and Tony rolls his eyes again, “You know what really irritates me? You all seem to be so damn obsessed with me flirting with Michelle but literally none of you morons mention I hit on Barack too. Does it bother you when I rub my little pansexual hands all over your boring, heteronormative views?” he snaps, waving his hands around for emphasis.

The video cuts out and Nat laughs, “that’s amusing. Got any more of those?” she asks. That was how they ended up watching an hour of Tony getting annoyed at the media.

Steve’s favourite was Tony ranting about sex toys, “Why is it more socially acceptable to make weapons of mass destruction in America than it is to make sex toys? Does the idea of sex equalling pleasure instead of baby making disturb conservatives so much that they would literally rather see people die than have an orgasm? What’s with that?” Tony asks, obviously drunk but no less correct. “I would rather make sex toys than bombs; I’m just gunna come out and say it. And for all those parents who think this is an ‘inappropriate’ discussion for television, please ask yourselves why it’s more okay to show people dying on the news than it is to say the word ‘dildo’. That’s fucked up,” he says, making a face and snatching another martini off of a waiter’s tray.

Somewhere in his watching videos the rest of his roommates had wandered up to join in. Clint enjoyed the video of someone holding a flip phone recording Tony talking about his not making weapons anymore but when the camera pans back to the person they were holding a StarkPhone in place of the flip phone. People had made the joke that Tony’s presence automatically updated outdated tech. Peggy particularly enjoyed the one where Tony called meninists a “bunch of fucking pissbabies with no idea what men’s issues actually are,” he had then gone on to explain several men’s issues the meninists seemed disinterested in.

Sam had thoroughly enjoyed Tony’s Mean Girls references, especially when people didn’t catch on. One reporter had asked about Justin Hammer and Tony had obviously seen an opportunity because he leans in gleefully, “let me tell you something about Justin Hammer. We were best friends in middle school. I know, right? It's so embarrassing.So then in eighth grade I started going out with my first boyfriend Kyle, who was totally gorgeous but then he moved to Indiana. And Justin was like, weirdly jealous of him. Like, if I would blow him off to hang out with Kyle, he'd be like, ‘Why didn't you call me back?’ And I'd be like, ‘Why are you so obsessed with me?’ So then, for my birthday party, which was an all-guys pool party, I was like, ‘Justin, I can't invite you because I think you're gay.’ I mean I couldn't have a gay at my party. There were gonna be guys there in their _bathing suits_. He was _gay_. So then his mom called my mom and started yelling at her, it was so retarded. And then he dropped out of school because no one would talk to him. When he came back in the fall for high school, all of his hair was cut off and he was totally weird, and now I guess he's on crack,” he even makes the same facial expressions Regina George did, which made it all the funnier.

Unfortunately for him people didn’t immediately pick up the joke so he had to explain that not only was an all guys pool party seriously homoerotic, but he also kept the part in about Regina’s first boyfriend, which made _him_ gay. He was extremely offended that anyone would assume he was ever friends with Justin Hammer. Also he wasn’t a homophobe. It was even funnier when Pepper joined in, the two of them managed to re-enact the ‘fetch’ scene with a particularly sexist senator, except they replaced fetch with sexism. That ended with Pepper and Tony shouting “boo you whore” in sync and walking away from the confused idiot laughing.

Sam bumps his shoulder, “so do you think you misjudged your soulmate?” he grins, probably expecting one of those stupid T.V reactions wherein the upset soulmate suddenly realized they were wrong and falls madly in love.

“Yeah, clearly I don’t know the guy. I still want nothing to do with him,” he says, dashing Sam’s hopes and dreams.

“I don’t give a damn about whether or not you want anything to do with Tony, you’re going to get me a date with Pepper Potts,” Peggy says, giving Steve the Comply or Die look.

“Get yourself a date with Pepper, it isn’t like you don’t have a reason to talk to her now, even if it is feeble and unrelated to her,” Steve says, wrinkling his nose at Peggy.


	2. Exsqueeze me?

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> You can find me on Tumblr at http://lovelylokiloxx.tumblr.com/

Peggy was certain Steve wasn’t serious about hunting Pepper Potts down to ask her out but she found herself in Stark Industries waiting for Pepper Potts to come collect her for their barely secured meeting anyways. To be fair she wasn’t there to ask Pepper out, she wasn’t raised in the jungle, Pepper had better things to do than indulge her fantasies. However she could probably use advice on how to tell Tony to handle Steve, namely that doing incredibly outrageous things to try and “help” was not the way to go. Steve loathed getting help from people, always had, mostly because everyone always assumed someone so small must need assistance. He was stubborn too, and it led to him constantly trying to prove himself. Whenever anyone tried to help he felt like he was being undermined, which usually wasn’t the case, but it caused problems nonetheless.

Pepper appears then, walking through the large glass doors and over to her, “you must be Peggy Carter, follow me,” she says. Peggy sighs and follows Pepper, wondering how many times she was going to hear that sentence before she met her actual soulmate. The curses of having something generic, Steve was lucky, he’s only ever dealt with one toaster on fire and it involved meeting his soulmates. The amount of times someone has said the words she had tattooed on her hip was annoying, literally every job interview started with those words.

“Look, Steve is stubborn, and Tony has _no clue_ how to deal with him. Which is why I’m here,” he says as they enter Pepper’s office. It was a damn nice space considering she was Tony’s assistant, he must value her.

Pepper smiles, “do you have a soulmate, Ms. Carter?” she asks.

Peggy shrugs, “no. Well yes, but not one that I’ve met,” she clarifies.

Pepper nods, “good,” she says and reaches for the side of her skirt. Peggy is about eighty percent sure she’s had a half a dozen dreams that started this way only this encounter wasn’t going to end in office sex because this was real life. Pepper unzips the skirt and carefully pulls her shirt free, lifting it to show her mark. Peggy’s words were tattooed across her lower ribs. She grins, this was a dream come true, literally all of her fantasies could be real now.

Peggy pats the desk in front of her, “oh, I have plans for you,” she says, “but for now we should probably deal with Steve, I get the feeling Tony is the cranky type when he doesn’t get what he wants and Steve is _very_ stubborn.” That was a bit of an understatement; Steve was so stubborn he decided that he’d deal with his asthma when S.H.I.E.L.D recruited him, which somehow ended in his asthma all but disappearing. He still had breathing problems sometimes but he was literally so stubborn he cured his own asthma. In reality it was probably just childhood asthma that disappeared in adulthood but still, Steve was a level of stubborn that could not be replicated.

“Oh, you have no idea,” Pepper says, smoothing out her skirt, “Tony is… well, he’s something else. I am fairly certain that Tony will figure Steve out though, however stubborn your Steve is I guarantee Tony is worse. I’ve never met anyone with that level of motivation to succeed at everything he does; it can be just as irritating as it is useful.” Pepper was sincere, really, but she had no idea what she was getting herself into.

Peggy throws her head back and laughs for at least five minutes straight. She dabs her eyes and calms down, “oh you poor thing, you have no idea. Steve doesn’t throw tantrums until he gets what he wants like Tony, he absolutely will not do what Tony wants unless he thinks it’s his idea. He loathes the idea of soul mates, or a predetermined plan, he likes to think that he is the only one who decides his fate. Tony won’t be able to fix this by annoying it into submission or throwing money at it,” she says, still laughing at the idea that Tony could out-stubborn Steve.

Pepper’s smile gets a little frosty at that, “Tony may have his moments, but he is a genius and a very good problem solver. I’m not sure how much of his media image you believe, but I assure you, they are wrong,” she says, narrowing her eyes. Hmm, well that was interesting; she was obviously personally invested in Tony. She wondered if that was reciprocated and if so to what length.

“Oh I know the media lies, but it doesn’t change the fact that Tony is a natural leader and he _will_ do whatever he thinks he needs to do in order to do what he thinks it right. That will not go over well with Steve, he will not let Tony into his life if he offers help of any kind for any reason, and the harder Tony tries to push the harder Steve will resist. I’m sure you can see how that would be a problem considering Tony’s habit of finding a limit and running as far as he can with it. Not to mention their personalities are completely incompatible, I have no idea why they’re soulmates, this is going to be an absolute disaster,” she flops back in her chair and sighs.

Pepper thaws a bit as Peggy speaks but she still seems a bit suspicious, “well then, what are we to do?” she asks, tilting her head to the side and examining Peggy.

“Well, I have a plan, and a backup plan, and a backup for that back up, Steve has a tendency to react in strange ways. I think I’ve got it covered though,” she pulls a folder out of her bag and hands it to Pepper.

She takes it and opens it, “my kind of girl,” she murmurs and begins to read.

*

Natasha helped Peggy with the plans but that didn’t mean they’d work out, Steve was the most stubborn person she’d ever met and she’s had to deal with Coulson and Clint argue about which Hogwarts house was better, Hufflepuff or Ravenclaw and neither of them accepted that obviously Slytherin was the best. She probably would have followed along on Steve’s date but she knew paranoid when she saw it and Bucky didn’t seem like the type to miss the fact that she was following. Instead she had to rely on Coulson and Clint to spy and not fuck it up when one of them inevitably started arguing about who was better, Sam or Dean Winchester, neither of them acknowledged that Bobby was obviously the best.

On the plus side their sassy commentary was hilarious and served as amusement for her and Thor, who had decided to join in on their operation because Jane was in London doing a conference. “Steve looks like he’s had an entire lemon tree shoved up his ass,” she reads aloud to Thor, who nearly spits out his drink.

“I hope this theoretical tree is a sapling otherwise Steve will no longer have an ass,” he says, leaning in to look at the accompanying picture. Steve is staring off into the distance looking annoyed and vaguely disgusted. Tony looks worried and Bucky is looking directly at the camera. She rolls her eyes, so he knew they were there, she told Clint and Coulson to be conspicuous. If Clint was wearing those fucking purple aviators that Kate gave him she was going to kick his ass.

She sends back an annoyed picture of herself with Thor grinning beside her captioned with a warning about Bucky. She wondered who he worked for, even when he was acting like a fool Clint didn’t draw much attention and Coulson blended anywhere doing anything. The guy was almost as good as she was. Bucky was obviously better or maybe on par, if he detected them. Something told her his looking in their direction was more than a simple coincidence, things were rarely so simple.

Beside her Thor snickers, “Darcy is watching Jane’s cats and she is not impressed,” he shows her a picture of Darcy on the ground covered in angry cats.

“I’m surprised they didn’t try and eat Loki first,” she says, he was obviously the one who took the picture; “they don’t like Loki.” No one but Thor and Darcy like Loki because he was an ass, even Loki didn’t Loki.

Thor sighs, “Any advice on angry cats?” he asks.

“Yeah, feed them treats and clean their shit box. Cats aren’t very hard to please,” she says, she’d know, she’s had plenty of cats in her time. Unfortunately Clint and Coulson were dog people so she got stuck with Lucky the pizza dog, who was dumb enough to run into traffic at least twice a week. Clint and Coulson were dumb enough to run after the stupid thing too, she didn’t exactly condone letting animals getting hit by cars but she did condone leashes for idiot dogs with poor impulse control. This was shy she liked cats, they didn’t need to go outside so there was no risk of them getting squished because their owners believe in letting them roam free. She’d only had one cat that got run over even when she did let them come and go as they pleased. It had been particularly scarring to her five year old self when Stormy got run over by the school bus. She hated school after that.

Coulson sends a picture of Steve rolling his eyes at something, still looking disgusted. This time Bucky is looking at Steve, laughing. Tony looks offended for some reason. The accompanying text comes a few seconds later; Steve was rolling his eyes at Tony because he’d said something about his bots being his children. She sends back a text of Loki with his mouth open, obviously screaming as he ran from Jane’s cats while Darcy flails in the background, two cats on her and one flying through the air at Loki. It appears that the cat launched itself of Darcy’s chest, which made it all the better. Clint sends back lol in caps with several exclamation points.

Thor looks worried, “perhaps Jane should have had someone else watch her cats,” he says, fingers hovering over the call button in his contact list.

“Oh for god’s sakes, all they had to do was feed the cats; it isn’t like that required a mass amount of brain cells. How Loki managed to fuck that up I have no idea,” and it was almost certainly Loki that managed to agitate the poor things. The cats didn’t mind Darcy when Loki wasn’t around.

Her phone goes off again, this time she received a picture of Steve with his head thrown back laughing, Bucky seemed to also be amused even if he was looking in the camera’s direction again. Tony looks thoroughly irritated. The caption reads: I fucking hated Stuart Little, no matter how many times I watched that movie I always thought ‘maybe he’ll drown in that wash machine this time'. He didn’t need two more movies, he needed to be exterminated.’

She snorts and hands the phone over to Thor, who cracks up, “I hated Stuart Little too, Loki loved that movie way too much until I told him that dad would have chosen the mouse over him if he was in the same orphanage as Stuart Little.”

Nat laughs harder, “oh my god, Thor! That is so mean, do think that would still hurt his feelings?” she asks, already planning on crushing Loki’s two whole emotions.

“I was ten, and when I said that the movie was looped for the seventh time in a row, I think I deserved one rude comment about Loki’s adoption. Don’t mention it to him though, he still refuses to watch that movie,” Thor says, looking slightly guilty. They were so watching Stuart Little their next movie night just to piss Loki off.

After that Steve thaws a little, laughing happily with Bucky and occasionally smiling at something Tony said. Nat and Peggy had figured Bucky’s presence might even things out a bit and help with bonding; clearly they were correct not that Nat ever doubted their plan. They weren’t matchmakers but they were experts in human behaviour and she figured that had to count for something. Obviously they should run a matchmaking business, if they could make this work they could make anything work.

Clint and Coulson send periodic updates until their phones and one of Clint’s hearing aids are stolen by Bucky. Coulson was impressed because his phone was in his pocket and neither him nor Clint noticed his heading aid coming off his head. Clint was upset because Bucky snatched the left one and that hearing aid worked better than the other one. Thor thought that was hilarious and wanted to recreate the situation to see if he could do that. Nat doubted it; the only one of them skilled enough to pull that off was her and maybe Coulson, _maybe_. Or Melinda May but she didn’t count because she wasn’t in their immediate friend group. After that Clint sent updates from his phone, including one where his hearing aid mysteriously returned with the caption _TRIUMPH_.

*

Steve was not going to tell his friends that his date went relatively well, which would have worked if Tony hadn’t let it slip that Peggy planned the whole fucking thing with Pepper. To make matters worse Pepper was Peggy’s fucking soulmate, which explained Peggy’s obsession with the woman and meant he couldn’t avoid Tony even if he wanted to. He probably could have avoided Rhodey but Rhodey and Pepper left him kind of fucked where avoiding Tony was concerned. Bucky he was less weary of, they seemed to get along okay and he wasn’t worried Bucky would do something stupid like move all his stuff into his place without permission and expect him to not be upset about it. Plus Bucky was genuinely funny, half the time he didn’t know if Tony was serious or if he was joking, it made conversation difficult.

Sam was practically singing ‘I told you so’, which didn’t even make sense because all he knew so far was that he liked Bucky alright and Tony wasn’t a total loss. That was hardly the sunshine and rainbows Sam was expecting. Peggy was thoroughly overjoyed with her own soulmate paring and Steve was not looking forward to hearing the stories, it was bad enough he had to deal with Nat and Clint. Thankfully Coulson had a demanding job that mostly left him out. He didn’t think he could handle that on a regular basis; once or twice a month was way more than enough. Clint refused to switch rooms with him too, probably because Nat had plans to make him suffer. Despite people’s popular opinion of her she was quite fond of pranking people in mostly non malicious ways. To be fair Loki deserved what he got.

“Okay, but like you have to get an autograph for me though, then you can continue hating on Tony,” Kate says, examining her fingernails with a raised brow.

“Really?” he says. He liked Kate as much as the next guy but her obsession with celebrities made no sense. It was weird how attached she was to people she didn’t even know, personally he thought memorizing facts about people who didn’t even know he existed sounded more like stalking but maybe that was just him.

“Ugh, yeah, if your skinny little ass wasn’t his soulmate I’d want a lot more than that,” she says, wiggling her eyebrows suggestively. Okay, first of all ew, second of all why was he so offended by that? It wasn’t like he should care who Tony does or doesn’t sleep with, it wasn’t his business.

“Gross, Kate. I’ll consider your autograph thing if I can find a way to ask without sounding like a creep,” he rolls his eyes and turns to the next asshole he had to deal with. Working in customer service would be so much better without the customers. Earlier some guy yelled at Kate because she didn’t thank him for making his coffee, yeah, figure that one out. If the guy was expecting to be thanked for his service he should probably consider not acting like an adult baby. When he asked for the manager Steve had laughed in his face and told him to fuck off.

He wasn’t actually the manager, Peggy was, but they had a system worked out. If someone asked for a supervisor or manager the sassiest person on the floor filled the role and told the person to eat shit, literally on one memorable occasion. That guy really shouldn’t have told Peggy and Nat he had no respect for people in the food service industry. He probably would have kept his bagel and his pride but instead Peggy verbally shredded the guy and Nat snatched the bagel and told him he didn’t get to consume a service he had no respect for. He should have been glad he walked away in one piece, Peggy and Nat weren’t forgiving people. To be fair they did stuck his picture all around town with the story attached; he didn’t get served much after that.

He and Kate dealt with the idiots with minimal issues. One guy bitched that Kate was putting the donuts in the box wrong and Kate looked the guy dead in the eye and flipped them all upside down. Steve had to resist laughing as he told the guy if he was going to verbally abuse the staff he should expect passive aggressive resistance. He advised that he treat the workers like people and he wouldn’t get upside down donuts. “Do you think Zola will fire us eventually? I mean he can’t possibly think telling various customers to shove a flamingo up their ass will attract more customers,” Kate says reasonably.

“Oh Zola will keep his mouth shut, we’ve got dirt on him,” he says. That was an unfortunate and scarring experience but coming across Zola’s credit card bills kept him and his friends employed. He only tested them once and when his mother received the statement and _flew from Germany_ to yell at him he figured it was best not to fire anyone lest the whole town find out what he jerked it to.

“Really, I wanna know!” Kate says, bouncing excitedly.

“Oh my god, no you do not, no one wanted to know what we knew, the only benefit is that it’s bad enough to keep us employed,” he shudders.

“Oh come on, it can’t be _that_ bad,” she says, “come on, what is it? Does he like torture puppies or something?” He makes a face, what kind of person wouldn’t turn in a puppy killer? What kind of person did Kate think he was? “Okay, not that. But like it has to be bad because you guys are mean to the customers sometimes. I mean like they deserve it because they started it but still. Come on, what have you got on Zola? Is his wife actually a sex doll? is he embezzling money? _Is he a robot_!” she asks, way too excited for her own good. She smacks her hand on the counter, “I know, Nazi torture porn!”

Steve makes a gagging noise, “okay, that was frighteningly close, but no. It appears consensual, if extremely… disturbing. I mean whatever floats you boat, but man, I didn’t need to know what got Zola’s rocks off. Honestly if I could scrub my brain I would.” Clint actually cried he was so upset Nat burdened him with the knowledge; Sam had stared wide eyed out the window for three hours without saying a word. Peggy locked herself in her room and didn’t speak to anyone for two full days. It probably wouldn’t have been so bad if it wasn’t Zola, people liked weird shit, he accepted that and that was fine, but _Zola_. The image of Zola masturbating was way more disturbing than his porn.

“Oh my god,” Kate stage whispers, “almost Nazi torture porn? You poor thing, how did you find out?” she asks, patting his shoulder comfortingly.

“Nat found a credit card statement in the office when she was counting tips, I don’t know what possessed her to read it but it was obviously a demon because that knowledge came straight from hell.” Kate doubles over laughing because she is not burdened with what he knows, that or she was not burdened with an over active imagination like the rest of them. Even Loki was highly disturbed and Loki was impossible to shock.

Eventually his work day concluded but not before Kate made a million and one Zola masturbation jokes. He threatened to throw up on her more than once and she stopped when he actually dry heaved. That was what she got for being a crappy human being. Thor drags himself in for the afternoon shift and makes an upset pterodactyl noise to indicate his mood. He and Kate return the noise upon leaving; drawing odd looks from the customers. One guy makes a knowing pterodactyl noise back, looking tired and upset. Probably a college student.

Steve remembered those days, it was a pain in the ass and it took him forever to meet S.H.I.E.L.D qualifications to be in the field. He managed though, second in his class, right behind Peggy and Nat, who tied for first. Man were the guys upset about that. He ended up taking the second spot because he was one of a handful of people who didn’t buy Melina May’s ditzy woman act and when she punched him in the face he was prepared. He still lost though. Actually he was pretty sure only Nat won that fight, Peggy was the only one to successfully complete the mock mission though.

He gets home with Kate in tow, she wanted to torture Clint with her jokes next, and he throws himself on his bed. He used to be a morning person before getting up early was a required part of his day. Now he glared at everything that moved for at least an hour before he started to not hate existence itself. Downstairs Clint lets out a loud wailing noise that was quickly followed by a thump and Kate’s maniac laughter. This is what Clint gets for making friends, now they all had to suffer.

“Steeeeeeeeve,” Clint wails from the bottom of the stairs, “make her stop,” he cries.

“You decided to befriend her, you deal with the consequences!” he yells back. If he had to suffer for six hours with Kate’s shit he can suffer for as long as it took for Kate to get bored and leave.

Nat’s door opens, “why is Clint impersonating a dying sea creature?” she asks, looking unimpressed. Steve fills her in on the situation, “if she comes anywhere near my room tell her I’ll put Shelly in her purse,” she says and shuts the door. He hears the lock click into place and he snickers. Kate wouldn’t test that, she hated spiders more than he did.

His phone chimes so he digs it out of his pocket. He wrinkles his nose when he realizes its Tony. He debates on not answering it for a few minutes but he gives when the phone goes off like seven more times.

_Oh my god_

_I’m so embarrassing_

_I had some stuff I had to talk to the board about and they told me no_

_I looked the one guy dead in the eye and said, I shit you not,_

_I fucking looked this guy in the eye and said_

_‘exsqueeze me’ unironically in a business meeting_

_‘exsqueeze me’ Steve._

_Unironically._

_Pepper’s face was priceless_

He stares at his phone for a minute before he nearly pisses himself laughing at Tony glaring down some business person and says “exsqueeze me?” with a straight face.

 _I don’t like you but that was the highlight of my day_ he texts back.

 _Exsqueeze me?_ Tony texts back and he starts laughing all over again. Nat ventures out of her room to find out what he was laughing about and snorts loudly, “that’s hilarious.”    


	3. I Told You So

“What the fuck is this, Coulson!” Nat yells.

Coulson feigns innocence, “what are you yelling about, Natasha?” he says calmly. Clint was wheezing on the ground he was laughing so hard.

“First Nicolas Cage, then Shia Leboeuf, and now _minions_!” she slams the small insect cage she sometimes used to carry Shelly around the house in down on the table. The thing was covered in pictures of Despicable Me minions. “Remove them,” she says, her voice dangerous and low. Steve and Sam snort and start laughing, Rhodey looks a little lost.

“Oh my god, that’s almost funnier than the time they changed her ringtone to them whispering Shia LeBoeuf and called her in the middle of the night,” Sam snickers. Nat had been so pissed and Peggy laughed so hard she almost wet herself, the fight between her and Sam for bathroom privileges was hilarious. Peggy eventually won and told Sam to take advantage of male anatomy and pee outside.

“I have no idea what you’re talking about,” Coulson says, flipping to the next newspaper page. Nat narrows her eyes and stalks off, presumably to de-minion her things. It takes less than five minutes for Nat to shriek and come flying back down the stairs with her gun, pointing angrily at the minion taped over the barrel.

“I will end you,” she snarls, aiming the gun at Coulson’s head.

Rhodey hides behind Sam, who turns to give him an offended look, “white people,” Rhodey whispers. Sam snorts and quickly covers his mouth before Nat decides to shoot him.

Coulson sighs heavily and folds up his paper, “don’t you think this is a bit excessive?” he asks.

“You put a minion on my gun,” she says as an explanation.

Clint starts laughing again and Nat points the gun at him instead, Clint squeaks, “de-minion her shit!” he yells as Coulson.

“Oh for god’s sake, Clint, she isn’t going to shoot us, she isn’t Peggy. Stop being so melodramatic and put the gun down Nat,” Coulson raises an eyebrow.

She narrows her eyes and leans in, “you let Clint shoot me when I dyed Lucky blue,” she says. Right, Steve remembered that. Clint disappeared for three weeks until Coulson found him and brought him back. He walked on eggshells for another three weeks waiting for Nat’s revenge. Eventually Nat bedazzled everything in his room a hideous lilac colour that he hated. He did, however, thoroughly enjoy the dark purple Nat put on his shoes and now he wore them everywhere.  

“Clint was supposed to shoot _at_ you, not actually shoot you, Clint misheard. Are you really going to kill me because Clint is literally deaf and a minion found its way onto your gun? Really? That doesn’t seem just a bit absurd?” he says, still freakishly calm. He’d be the first and the only, anyone who didn’t take Nat seriously usually ended up dead or worse, or they get their shit bedazzled.

“Clint _shot_ me!” she yells.

“He nicked your jacket, Nat, that’s hardly deadly,” he points out.

“That was my favourite jacket. Get your minions off my shit and maybe, _maybe_ , I will spare your Captain America memorabilia from being bedazzled. With the wrong shades of each colour. Do you want an azure, pink, and beige Cap shield?” she threatens.

Coulson looks scandalized, “you wouldn’t _dare_!” he says dramatically, pressing his hand to his heart.

“Oh I would, now clean up your minions!” she waves her gun around. He really hoped the gun wasn’t loaded; they had an incident once after a particularly rough night of drinking and the fabulous idea to mimic the movie Grown Ups and play arrow roulette. Clint got shot in the ass with his own arrow and as hilarious as that was after Clint’s ass was stitched he didn’t really want a repeat with Nat’s gun, especially since it’d go through the ceiling into Peggy’s room. Peggy wouldn’t give a damn if she was shot, Peggy would fight.   

Coulson picks Clint up off the ground and takes off to clean the minions off of Nat’s things. Nat grins, “those idiots, this isn’t even loaded,” she says and snatches Coulson’s paper to read.

“You people are nuts,” Rhodey decided.

“Oh come on, your best friend bought an entire island because he liked the view, in what world is that a logical reaction?” Sam points out.

Rhodey looks offended on Tony’s behalf, “he has the money, why not?” he says in a sorry attempt at defending Tony.

“He once bought a tree in another country then had it uprooted and had it flown to him so he could plant it in his yard,” Sam says, giving Rhodey his Judging You face.

“Okay fine, that one is a little bit ridiculous but he liked the tree, can’t a guy live?” Rhodey flaps his hand around, knowing he was losing this battle.

“Yesterday Bucky sent me a video of Tony in the tree crying for Bucky to save him. Apparently he climbed up to high and he couldn’t get down,” Steve throws in. Bucky had been chiding him for climbing up there to begin with; Tony just sat there and whined to be saved, crying about losing a shoe.

“Like literally crying?” Rhodey asks, looking concerned.

“Nah, like when dogs cry to sit in your lap kind of cry, Bucky told him he got himself up there so he could get himself down. I’m pretty sure Tony ended up calling the fire department to get him out,” he shakes his head. At least they had a story to tell, ‘today I saved Tony Stark from a tree he was dumb enough to climb’. He’d been sent a flurry of snapchats from the two about being annoyed with the other. It had been pretty amusing though he didn’t tell anyone else that.

Rhodey sighs, “this is like that one time he almost got drowned by that seal,” he says, deadpan.

“Please don’t tell me you’re serious, in what world does one casually talk about their friend almost getting drowned by a seal?” he says. He could not handle this, Tony did stupid things, he knew that, but he didn’t ever want to get to a point where he talked about Tony almost being drowned by sea creatures like Coulson talked about Lucky getting into the garbage again.

*

JARVIS lets Tony know he got a text and he tells him to ignore it. JARVIS then lets him know that the text is from Steve. He pulls his head out of the engine he was currently working on, “really?” he asks the AI, sounding painfully excited. Steve never text first, this was improvement.  

“I see no reason to lie about incoming text messages,” JARVIS tells him. Tony rolled his eyes, why did he program sarcasm into JARVIS again?

“Fine, what’s it say?” he asks. He wipes his hands off and goes back over to the prototype StarkPhone he was working on, it was almost ready, he just needed to make sure it could survive being dropped from large heights and being baked into a cake. When Bucky questioned his methods Tony told him that he was ridiculously hard on his stuff so if it could survive his mishaps it can survive anyone. He’s dropped his phone out windows and into cake batter far too many times and not everyone had a JARVIS to automatically back up all their information.

“’How the fuck did you almost get drowned by a seal’” JARVIS says with no voice inflections at all. Tony laughs; tech reading texts was his favourite thing, especially when they read acronyms like lol as words. JARVIS saying lool has been the highlight of many of his days.

“That was one time, and Rhodey needs to keep his mouth shut,” he says, fully expecting JARVIS to take note and reply with that.

“Is that your reply, sir?” JARVIS asks. Right, after he accidentally sent Rhodey that sext he programmed JARVIS to clarify replies and recipients.

“Yeah, and ask Bucky where he is,” he throws in. “Dummy, get over here, I need to you to throw this phone as hard as you can,” he tells the bot. Dummy wheels over and carefully takes the phone in its claw before wheeling to the centre of the room. It spins a few times, gathering speed before releasing the phone. Tony didn’t have time to get out of the way before it smacked into his gut, he wheezes and falls to the floor.

“Oh for god’s sakes Dummy, it didn’t occur to you not to throw the damn thing at Tony?” Bucky says, appearing the garage out of know where. The bot hangs its claw in shame and goes to collect the phone to retest durability. This time the phone goes across the room and into a wall. Tony hears something crack and sighs, struggling to get up so he could see what broke. “Tony, leave the phone, you can work on it tomorrow,” he picks Tony up off the ground, ignoring Tony’s protests.

“Steve is inquiring about ‘that one time in college’, which time do you think he’s referring to,’ JARVIS asks.

“Text Rhodey and tell him to shut the fuck up. Tell Steve Rhodey is a lying sack of hair,” Tony says, offended that Rhodey wasn’t keeping his damn mouth shut. He’d been paid _twice_ now, Tony wanted a damn refund.

“You text Steve?” Bucky asks, feigning indifference.

“No, actually he text me. Rhodey told him about the seal,” Tony says, he was going to have a talk to Rhodey about being a good bro because he was failing miserably. He was so telling Sam about that one time Rhodey thought he’d look good blonde and he was gunna show Sam pictures too. Rhodey thought he eradicated them all but he didn’t and Tony was going to savour Sam’s laughter. Rhodey had looked like a damn q-tip.

“Huh, well that’s improvement,” Bucky says, still feigning indifference. He cared whether he showed it or not, Tony knew he changed Bucky’s opinion on soul mates because he was a special snow flake. He planned on doing the same for Steve because he was an extra special snow flake.

“Exactly, we’re growing on him,” Tony says excitedly. It was only a matter of time he knew, he was irresistible and Bucky was okay.

“Don’t count your chicken before they hatch Tony, Steve won’t drop his views that easily. Besides, something is still off about him. Something is missing and I don’t know what,” Bucky gently drops Tony onto the couch.

Tony sighs, “you’re being paranoid, Bucky, he’s made it clear he wanted nothing to do with either of us, it doesn’t exactly sound like he’d hurt either one of us,” he says logically. He’d probably be the primary target out of the two though, Bucky’s past was well hidden by several government agencies and Tony himself, you’d have to be damn good to link Bucky to anything.

“Doesn’t mean he doesn’t hurt other people,” Bucky says and if it wasn’t Steve Tony would have agreed.

Instead he laughed, “really? Not exactly the vibe I got from him,” he says. He got the opposite actually, not that he was a particularly good judge of character, but he did usually know an asshole when he spotted one.

“Tony you once tried to poke a cobra, no offence but you’re skill at assessing danger fucking sucks,” Bucky looks at him like he’s stupid, and yeah, okay, he got Bucky’s point. That didn’t mean he wasn’t right though, he was, he could feel it.

*

Something wasn’t right here and he knew it, he didn’t give a damn what Tony thought of the situation he was not being paranoid. Something was missing from Steve’s history, something not immediately available for JARVIS to find. He didn’t really think Steve was a danger per se, but anyone who purposefully left details out of their life even on the internet had something to hide. He’d know. So he did some surveillance despite Tony’s protests that that was a blatant invasion of privacy. He pointed out that scrubbing all online records was also an invasion of privacy and Tony hadn’t been able to come back from that one so he let him go.

The problem was that nothing seemed out of place, he went to work, came home, was dumb enough to prank the dangerous red head, and generally seemed to enjoy his life. He was starting to wonder if Tony was right about him being paranoid and figured maybe Steve had a right to not want anything to do with him. That was before a team of… someone’s showed up at his door at three in the morning. They were carrying someone who was obviously hurt pretty badly.

He resisted the urge to call Tony and tell him ‘I told you so’ and let the scene play out. Natasha answers the door and asks a few questions before letting them in. Natasha reappears less than a minute later with her jacket on; one very injured guy right behind her. Her soul mate he knew, that would be the only reason someone that injured would be moving. Whatever Natasha was about to do was dangerous. He seemed to be pleading with her to let it go as he bled out of a very nasty head wound; it was a miracle he was even able to stand.

Natasha didn’t seem to be listening to him though. An Asian woman shows up at the door and pulls the guy back, catching her words via lip reading, ‘if anyone can deal with this it’s Natasha’. That’s when Bucky recognizes him as the guy from the diner, what the hell was going on here? Natasha gets the keys from the woman and goes out the car; the other guy gets pulled back inside. The kitchen light goes on, judging from the amount of shadows that passed in front of the window the people inside were in a flurry. Probably dealing with that head wound.

The door opens a few minutes later and a sleep mussed blonde guy steps out, looking for something that obviously wasn’t there. This time a blonde woman appears to collect the person at the door, Clint if Steve’s description was anything to go by. The blonde woman rolls her eyes, ‘she’s _Natasha Romanoff_ ’ the woman says. Clint says something back but without him facing Bucky there was no way to tell what it was. Whatever it was it made the blonde woman roll her eyes, ‘you never retire from S.H.I.E.L.D’ she says.

“S.H.I.E.L.D?” he says out loud. Shit. By the time the blonde and Clint look over to the noise he made he was already gone.

He waits until he’s sufficiently sure no one followed him and calls Tony, “pull up any and all S.H.I.E.L.D records on Steve, and while you’re at it look up ‘Natasha Romanoff,’” he tells Tony in place of a greeting.

“Missed you too honey,” Tony says, but Bucky can hear him rustling around to comply.


	4. T.A.H.I.T.I

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> First note, the pig story is true, this is a thing that happened at the place I worked, I wasn't there that day but my mom was. That was an event and a half.
> 
> Note two, there isn't actually Agents of S.H.I.E.L.D spoilers in this chapter (stuff is mentioned though) but there will be, i'll make note of any spoilers at the beginning of each chapter. Also if you haven't watched Agents of S.H.E.I.L.D do it, it's a fantastic show.

“I’ve got ninety nine problems Natasha, and your impulse control is every single one of them!” Coulson yells. Clint was pacing behind the couch flapping his hands around, obviously at a loss of what to do here.

Nat glares at Coulson, “impulse control or not I got the job done and unlike you I’m not half dead,” she says, hands on her hips.

“Oh I see, you can almost kill me but no one else can,” Coulson rolls his eyes and Steve can see Nat physically restrain herself from strangling Coulson. Clint stopped pacing to stare with his mouth open.

“First of all that gun wasn’t loaded and you knew it, no one with a half a brain points a loaded gun at someone they don’t intend to shoot. And there was a _minion_ on it, they belong in movies, not on guns,” she snaps, “but hey, if you’d like me to kill you I’ll take that pillow from behind your head and smother you with it. It isn’t like it’d be hard when you’ve got cracked ribs and a nasty head wound, would you _like_ to be smothered?” she says in a low, dangerous voice.

Coulson sighs, “not really, I’m just cranky, you know how I get when things go wrong,” he says, looking apologetic. “How the hell did you manage by yourself though?” he asks.

“I have a lot of rage problems,” she says, looking out the window, “their heads served as my stress reliever. Now I have to go teach Zola a lesson, he’s stepping out of line and that will not stand. I’m sure the public would like to know about those mouse turds,” she says, “plus I still have all of those visa statements, who even leaves those at work? Isn’t he supposed to be a genius? He’s bragging about it all the time, maybe he’ll be able to do a math equation to figure out how fucked he is,” she says and walks off to do her business.

“Uhh, okay?” Steve says, not sure what to make of that, “this isn’t like that time we found a dead rat in the freezer is it? Because that had to violate at least ten health codes,” that was the day he gave up eating at work. He and Thor ran out screaming and made Peggy go get the rat after Loki refused. Peggy had been annoyed with their dramatics and disgusted that she had to peel a rat out of the corner of the freezer.

Coulson makes a face, “there are rats in his store? How is it porn he’s worried about?” he asks.

“Maybe he wants to spare the public knowledge that he masturbates,” Clint suggests, “I know I could have went my whole life without knowing. Those poor porn stars, they don’t even know,” he says sadly, “and to be fair we only ever found one rat. But we also once found a pig in the bathroom so maybe someone left their pet in the bathroom again and it got stuck in the freezer. Who knows?”

Steve remembered that, he was the one on bathroom cleaning duty and he went to go into the men’s washroom to find a pig in there. Someone forgot an _entire_ live pig in the bathroom, supposedly by accident.

Coulson looks alarmed, “you found a _what_ in the bathroom?” he asks.

“A pig, a live pig running around and squealing, I know because I was the one who had to get the damn thing out without freaking the customers out. When Clint tells you customer service sucks he isn’t lying,” Steve says, he had way more horror stories from working in a coffee shop than he did working as a S.H.I.E.L.D agent.

*

Tony had already looked over the records by the time Bucky got back and he was happy to tell Bucky that he was wrong, score two for him. Bucky reads them over anyways because Tony telling him Steve had an exemplary record clearly wasn’t trustworthy enough. He tried not to take it personally because one time he told Bucky he got hurt in the lab but it wasn’t that bad when he had three cracked ribs, a twisted ankle, and a concussion. Bucky had been some pissed when Rhodey filled him in. “Something is missing,” he says when he finishes reading. Tony resists the urge to roll his eyes because Bucky had issues and he wasn’t a total asshole.   

“And what makes you think that,” he says, mostly succeeding in not sounding annoyed.

“None of this gives any reason for him to leave, from the records he and his team were incredibly successful, why leave that to work in a coffee shop he hates?” Okay, so maybe he had some points there, but Tony hadn’t been able to hack the higher S.H.I.E.L.D clearance levels, he didn’t think he’d have to so he let them be.

“Fine, but does that really matter?” he asks, so Steve got tired of playing super spy, it wasn’t like he and Bucky hadn’t had some dramatic career changes in the past.

“It does when there doesn’t appear to be a reason. People don’t make dramatic changes like that with no inciting force,” he says, flipping through the records.

“Maybe it was something more internal than external? He could have personal issues with the job,” Tony reasons.

Bucky was already shaking his head though, “no, if it was personal his whole team wouldn’t have quit right after him. And Natasha has one hell of a record; by the way, you should hire her as security. And Peggy, Pepper might actually take security detail if it’s Peggy,” he says, still absorbed in the records.

“Okay, so something happened, but do we really need to know? Like is it actually important?” He wouldn’t really want someone digging through his personal shit without his permission so he kind of felt bad for going through Steve’s shit. Granted he had reasons for not wanting people to dig into his personal life that included but was not limited to the fact that his arc reactor was probably killing him. He kept that to himself though, no need for anyone else to know unless it was an actual problem. And by actual problem he meant he was dead and didn’t have to deal with it.

“This is why you almost die every two weeks, you have no idea when you should dig for more information before you act,” Bucky says.

“And here I thought it was my poor impulse control, lack of self-preservation instincts, and suicidal tendencies that were my downfall,” he says cheerily, making a face at Bucky.

“While your poor impulse control and lack of self-preservation instincts are at work in your near death experiences they mostly just influence you to think eating an entire large pizza fresh out of the oven in thirty seconds is a good idea. Then you proceed to whine about having a burnt tongue for three days and you don’t even feel bad for making my ears listen to that,” Bucky says without missing a beat. Tony snorts and laughs, yeah; maybe eating that entire pizza while it was hot was not a good idea. It was so worth it though.

“Seriously though, can’t we just leave the guy be? I mean it isn’t like he’s digging through our shit, I checked to see if he had S.H.I.E.L.D run anything on either of us and he hasn’t so I think maybe we should also not do that,” he says, raising an eyebrow.

Bucky sighs, “you don’t give up ever do you? He hasn’t looked us up because he doesn’t care, Tony, that’s different,” he says, apparently unaware that that was hurtful. His phone goes off so he busies himself with that instead of dealing with his soul mate problems.

“Ha, he cares, he just text,” Tony says and follows the link that Steve sent him. He sighs as the music starts to play, he really should have expected a Rickroll.

_First of all how dare you_

He texts Steve, sending a link to some hilariously off the wall illuminate theory; they were his new favourite thing.

_Do not._

Steve sends back almost immediately. Ha, that’s what he got for Rickrolling people, plus One Direction was in that particular video and that made it even funnier.

“Did he just Rickroll you?” Bucky asks, not looking up from his notes.

“No,” Tony lies even though Bucky heard the song play.

“I’ve met bread that could lie better than you. Seriously though, these people are very successful, they were nicknamed the ‘avengers’. They were very good too, from what I understand they were the best S.H.I.E.L.D had, so why leave?” he asks again.

“Maybe he got bored,” Tony suggests.

“Of being a spy?” Bucky raises an eyebrow, “I don’t think so. This isn’t the kind of job someone just walks away from, not successfully anyways. There has to be a reason,” he grins, “like a mission gone wrong,” he says, obviously having found something.

“Alright, I’ll bite. What have you found,” Tony asks. Bucky is frowning at whatever it was so he figured bad news and given his last two years he could deal with that.

“I don’t really know, whatever it is its labeled T.A.H.I.T.I. There isn’t actually any information on it though, except for the death of one Phil Coulson, who I happen to know is very much alive.” Bucky taps the screen a few times, “can you hack the higher security levels?” he asks.

“I can but it’ll take time, especially if I don’t want to get busted. Do you really think it matters?” he asks.

“Tony why would an entire team of people quit _except_ for the guy who died? That doesn’t make any sense. You’ve read a million and one studies, if two out of three soul mates makes a career change, what’s the chance of the third staying in the career the other two left? Especially when that particular soul mate was the one that died?” Bucky asks. Okay, so he was definitely on to something here and Tony has always loved a mystery.

“Actually very low unless someone isn’t committed to their new life, you said Nat took off after whomever it was that hurt Coulson and that Clint would have followed? Clearly they aren’t committed; it is kind of weird that Coulson was the one that stayed though. He’d be the one with the most reason to quit,” he says, pulling up the offending file to look over himself.

It didn’t tell him much, just that everyone quit when something went wrong except for Coulson, who died but not really. “What I’m curious about is Loki, the guy is a loose cannon, he’s failed more psych evals than I have and that’s saying something. Everyone else seems to have a strong moral compass except for him but he quit along with the others. What was strong enough to shake the guy who has next to no sense of right and wrong?”

“Why have someone who keeps failing psych evals work for you?” Tony counters. That question seemed more important to him at least.

“Have you seen this guy’s record? I’d rather have him work for me than work against me, better he destroy everything in his path for the right reason rather than join the wrong team and just destroy everything. It seemed the rest of the team kept him in check too, and it appeared that he had to be motivated to step out of line. So, think Steve will be happy to fill in all of the missing details?” Bucky asks. Tony raises an eyebrow in question, “yeah, didn’t think so,” Bucky mumbles.


	5. 084

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> There is kind of Agents of S.H.I.E.L.D spoilers in here, not explicit ones though. 
> 
> **Some spaces and other grammar things were brought to my attention so I have fixed it, i think, enjoy!

Nat was more than a little pissed to find Coulson missing when he was still technically wounded but one call to Melinda May later she was assured that Coulson was safe and not allowed in the field. It wasn’t even four hours later when Steve got a call from Coulson that indicated that either Melinda was lying of Coulson gave her the slip. Either was possible but Melinda wasn’t an easy woman to shake. “Oh come on,” Coulson says after Steve says no, “you love 084’s, bring Peggy and it’ll be like that one time we busted in that neo-Nazi German camp to get that obelisk thing that kills people when they touch it,” he says, sounding way to excited about that. He’s prepared to tell Coulson no, he was done with S.H.I.E.L.D, that was why he quit, but Coulson goes on, “they think its alien. Actual _aliens_ might have left something here, Steve!” Coulson says excitedly.

Steve sighs heavily, “fine. I’m bringing Thor though, Peggy’s at work,” she had been very irritated with the schedule change because she was going to spend the night at Pepper’s place. That plan had obviously fallen through and now she and Nat were probably raising hell because they were grumpy.

“Yes!” Coulson says excitedly on the other end, “you know what to do,” he says and hangs up. He sighs and goes to collect Thor out of the basement he shared with Loki, the laundry, some mice, and probably a ghost or two.

“Hey,” he says upon entering, “we have to go deal with an 084, apparently it might be alien and some idiot thought it was a good idea to put _Coulson_ on the case,” he says irritably. Thor and Loki are curled up on Thor’s bed swathed in blankets eating popcorn and watching some horror movie. Clearly that was Loki’s pick; Thor had a thing for romance movies.

Loki pauses the movie, “are you fucking kidding me?” he asks, “they sent _Coulson_ to deal with something _alien_ ,” he snaps. Thor climbs his way out of the blanket nest, looking thoroughly irritated the whole time, silently agreeing with Loki.

“No, I’m not kidding you, but if we got this done quickly we can get back before Nat and Clint get suspicious and they never have to know,” he says. Nat and Clint would not be very happy with Nick Fury if they found out about this.

“Do you think it’s wise to lie to Nat?” Thor asks, looking concerned.

“No, but it beats the alternative. Let’s go,” he says.

Three hours later he and Thor find themselves in a Mexican cave flooded with lights and S.H.I.E.L.D agents, “some kids were exploring and found the hammer, they tried to lift it but they couldn’t. It didn’t take long for the word to spread throughout town that there was a hammer in a cave that no one could lift. We were called in yesterday to deal with it,” Coulson fills them in as they walk through the large cavern.

When they get there they find a seemingly innocuous looking hammer sitting on a stone. Steve and Thor move around it, examining the surprising about of detail on the surface, “looks Norse,” Thor notes.

Coulson nods, “that’s what we thought but there are no records of anything like that anywhere, the closest we came was to a weapon we found in, well, three different places and that was a wild card too,” Coulson says.

Steve and Thor exchange a glance and look at the hammer, “after you,” Steve says and steps back, letting Thor take hold of that hammer’s handle. He braces himself for resistance and pulls, flying backward when the hammer doesn’t provide the resistance he expected.

Coulson snaps a couple pictures, “well then, I guess it can be lifted. I’ll let the right people know,” he says pleasantly and walks off.

Thor nods and sets the hammer down in front of Steve, “now let’s see if you are worthy,” he says, grinning. Steve sighs and grips the handle, fully expecting to not be able to lift it. He’s surprised when the hammer comes up with no resistance. He frowns, examining the hammer closely.

Light shimmers across the surface of the hammer, illuminating a phrase. The letters shift and change into English, “‘whoever can lift this hammer will possess the power of Thor,’” he reads aloud.

Thor laughs, “ha, I posses the power of myself! Fantastic news,” he says, grinning. Steve snorts and shakes his head at Thor’s joke, grinning.

“Well, what does the power of Thor _mean_ though? Obviously this is a weapon, and no ordinary on either if only certain people can lift it. Wait, what was that hammer from Norse mythology? The one Thor held?” Steve prompts.

Thor frowns, “you think that’s Mjolnir?” he asks.

“Mjolnir?” Coulson echoed, “what drew you to that conclu- wait, you can hold it too?” he asks Steve.

                Steve ignores Coulson’s rhetorical question and shows Coulson the inscription on the hammer, “according to Norse mythology only those who were worthy could hold the hammer, could be why most people hadn’t been able to move it,” he says, offering an explanation.

Coulson nods, “I’ll note that in my report, for now we need to get that thing back to S.H.I.E.L.D headquarters before someone gets their hands on it.” They move out of the cave and try to stick Mjolnir on a briefcase only to find it won’t be lifted that way so Thor just carries it. They get back to S.H.I.E.L.D in one piece with the hammer in tow, Coulson complaining about paper work the whole way back. Upon return everyone tries to lift the damn thing at least twice.

No one else succeeds until Natasha storms in, “what, you didn’t think I’d notice Loki moping around muttering about 084’s and aliens?” she snaps, snatching the hammer out of a trainee’s grasp. “What the hell even is this thing?” she says, turning it over in her hands.

Coulson reappears then and goes from guilty to impressed fast when he sees Nat holding the hammer, “you’re worthy! That’s one of my soul mates and she’s worthy of Thor’s hammer!” he says excitedly to the nearest S.H.I.E.L.D agent, glowing with pride.

Natasha rolls her eyes, “if the hammer is Thor’s than why was it an 084? Are you people seriously dumb enough to mistake Thor’s personal property for unknown objects?” she snaps.

“No, not _mine_ , _Thor’s_ , like the Norse thunder god Thor. The hammer, we think, is Mjolnir,” Thor says, filling her in.

Nat raises an eyebrow at the hammer, “isn’t this thing supposed to be wielded by only those who are worthy?” she asks.

“Yes,” Thor says, “and so far that’s you, me, and Steve. I guess if anyone wants to test it we have to be the ones that move it around,” he sighs. He wasn’t any more impressed than Nat and Clint had been about Coulson. Even Loki, who had no moral compass at all, had thought Fury’s decision was taking things too far. They hadn’t planned on being dragged back into this shit storm.

“Oh for god’s sakes,” Nat mumbles, “why the hell did I have to be worthy?” She pushes the hammer into the chest of the trainee she snatched it from and walks away. The trainee and the hammer immediately drop to the ground.

“Well,” the trainee says, “I’m pleased to report that my fingers don’t feel crushed so the magic in the hammer obviously isn’t designed to hurt unsuspecting S.H.I.E.L.D trainee’s hands.”

*

Tony wakes up alone, which is starting to annoy him because he’s a god damn special snowflake and he should be cuddled like one, god Damnit. He finds Bucky taking notes on what was sure to be S.H.I.E.L.D files and that simply will not do. He sit and Bucky’s lap and scatters his notes, “pay attention to me!” he whines.

Bucky promptly pushes him onto the floor, “you are such an attention whore, what are you going to do when Steve is actually around?” he asks.

“First of all I see no ways in which two people basking in my glory could possibly go wrong. Secondly, you’ve decided Steve isn’t a shitty person? When did you come to that conclusion? Also I told you so,” he throws in because he is a petty bastard and he knows it.

Bucky rolls his eyes, “I’ve had JARVIS go through every S.H.I.E.L.D record that mentions him, the ones that we have at least, and nothing seems off. Even the psych notes all say good things about him,” Bucky says casually, like reading someone’s recorded intimate thoughts was not a gross violation of personal privacy.

“Bucky! You can’t just read that stuff,” he protests, “stop that,” he says rather uselessly.

“I’ve already read it, and frankly nothing in those records told me anything new about him anyways. He wasn’t giving the shrink the whole story and she knew it, especially after Coulson’s death. Hiding things aside he seems to be a genuinely good person, certainly interested in making sure people don’t have to suffer. His friends, Loki aside, don’t raise any red flags either and even Loki has to be motivated to fuck things up. If there isn’t something to be gained he doesn’t bother, I guess S.H.I.E.L.D saw that as something of an advantage. Steve is an expert spy though, there isn’t really a way to tell if he’s telling the truth or not, plus he is very much the righteous type…”Bucky trails off, reading some paper.

Tony frowns and sits up, “and how is being righteous a bad thing exactly? And so far Steve has been crazy easy to read,” he points out. He’s made no effort to hide to hide how he felt and Tony didn’t see any reason he’d lie about that, there were no gains in distancing yourself from your soulmates unless you genuinely didn’t want any. That, or he hated himself so much he didn’t think anyone should have to suffer with him, but he figured he and Bucky had that covered.

Bucky snorts, “Hitler was a righteous man, Tony, so were the governments that decided having a brainwashed human weapon was a good idea, so were you when you were still making weapons, and you’re just as righteous about your actions now. What the right thing is depends wholly on an individual’s belief system; the terrorists that kidnapped you probably thought they were doing the right thing too. That trait isn’t necessarily a good thing, Tony,” Bucky says, Tony thinks he’s over analyzing to the extreme but he doesn’t say anything. He’s found that invalidating Bucky’s emotions led to fights, which led to Bucky disappearing for days at a time. The makeup sex was great though, he wasn’t going to lie.

“Okay, but I don’t think Steve is Hitler Bucky, I mean even if he does have some fucked up stuff in his past or present are we really in a place to judge?” Tony asks. Both of them had a pretty high body count and Tony’s was completely conscious and something he made a profit off of, at least Bucky was brainwashed. He wouldn’t ever tell Bucky that though, it was kind of shitty to tell someone they were lucky they weren’t in control of their actions just because he wished he wasn’t in control of his. But then he always was selfish.

“I don’t think Steve is Hitler either, Tony. But he does work for a government organization that can bring people back from the dead apparently and that doesn’t sit well with me,” he says. Tony gets it then and feels kind of like an ass, which he supposes isn’t anything new for him.

“Worked, past tense, he doesn’t work for S.H.I.E.L.D anymore. And he isn’t about to brainwash you and sell you back to the government or whatever either, there is literally nothing to be gained by doing that. And even if he did try that I’m a little offended that you’d think I’d let him, that’s actually kind of extremely insulting,” he says, surprised by how hurt he was by that.

Bucky winces, “Tony there are things that fall outside of even your control,” he says softly.

He snorts, “super-secret government agencies are so not out of my control, we’ve established that several times over by now. Even if we hadn’t your sitting with a bunch of classified S.H.I.E.L.D files around you, clearly S.H.I.E.L.D is not immune to my efforts. If I can find all that without any issues I’d have no problems finding you. Now stop depressing me and start petting me and telling me I’m pretty,” he demands, poking Bucky’s leg.

*

Steve hated midnight shifts almost as much as he hated spiders, Loki, on the other hand, loved working midnights. That was nice at least, usually working with Loki was as pleasant as sitting on a porcupine but when it was midnights he was tolerable. They wipe things down and mop stuff to look productive to the cameras while having a heated debate about alien sex.

“You can’t just fuck an alien Loki, you don’t even know what they genitalia looks like,” he points out, “and how do you get them off? You don’t know,” he says, waving his cloth around.

“Okay, first of all you can ask questions, Rogers, I’m sure the potential alien will be happy to point you in the right direction,” Loki says, “and who cares what their junk looks like, all genitals look weird as fuck and soggy and shit. Genitalia is not pretty,” Loki wrinkles his nose.

“Okay fine. But like what if any liquid generated by their genitalia is toxic to humans? Or what if it gives us STI’s? Or vice versa? What if they have weird cultural customs that call for your immediate death? What if they eggs in your skin and then alien babies rip their way out of your flesh, that would be bloody awful,” he says, adopting a British accent. It was a weird habit he had when he was tired, Peggy was the opposite and adopted an American accent.

“I admittedly did not think of those things but I stand by my decision to have sex with the alien, if I die from it I will die satisfied and no one will tell Darcy about how, exactly, I died. Just tell her aliens, I know she’d do the same,” he says, “and you need to go to bed, you’re sounding British.”

Steve rolls his eyes, “I can’t, I’m stuck here for the next three hours. And I’m not lying because you wanted to stick your dick in some alien. Also what if that isn’t how they have sex? What if alien sex means braiding each other’s hair and eating pop tarts or some other weird combination like that? What if alien sex is repeatedly smacking your heads together? Would you still do it?” he asks.

“Hell yeah, and if alien sex was hair braiding and pop tarts do you think Thor would realize? He loves braiding hair and pop tarts, he’d be right at home,” Loki says, snickering.

“I think you underestimate Thor’s intelligence, I mean he’s not dumb enough to not realize he’s having alien sex. I don’t know why you think he’s so dumb,” he says, offended on Thor’s behalf.

“Steve, Thor once tried to fit an entire pizza in his mouth because Clint told him he couldn’t, that qualifies as stupid in my books. Frankly if we wanted to know what alien sex was like we should just ask Clint and Nat,” he says, rolling his eyes.

Steve makes an offended noise, “that is just rude and you know it Loki!” he says, outraged that Loki would even say that.

“Oh get off your high horse, you know damn well you were thinking it,” he says. Steve would have happily told him he was wrong but someone comes in so he goes off to serve them. After that business picks up so they don’t get back to their alien sex debate, which was good for Loki because Steve was obviously winning.

Thor comes in in the morning, looking like shit and communicating strictly in odd noises. He didn’t even consider it weird when he, Loki and Thor entered a conversation consisting of noises to communicate their feeling via extended lengths and various pitches. The customer that gave them an odd look clued them in and Steve sends Loki off to go deal with it. The sunrises and Thor stops looking pale and eventually he and Loki get to leave. Thor expresses his displeasure by making a prolonged squeaking noise; the farmers in the corner give him an odd look but return to their coffee quickly.

When he and Loki get home Loki throws himself on the couch and immediately passes out, Steve goes to the kitchen to get a snack before he goes back to bed. Natasha pads in and starts looking around, making enough noise to wake Loki up and get cursed out, “what are you looking for, Nat?” he asks after she lifts a pot up for the third time.

“I don’t mean to alarm anyone, but I can’t find Shelly,” she says, looking worried.

Steve digs his phone out of his pocket and calls Tony. He answers on the third ring, groggy and surprisingly not annoyed, “I’m moving in,” he tells him instead of greeting him.

Something happens and the result is Tony presumably falling out of bed, or at least that’s what Steve assumes the loud bang was, “what?” Tony asks, sounding fully awake and shocked.

“Nat lost her widow and I’m not dying because I thought tarantulas were creepier than black widows,” he says.


	6. Plan B

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> I did no some minor research on black widows but I'm lazy, however from what I gathered it would suck to get bit but because humans are so large in comparison a black widow's bite wouldn't be enough to kill a person. I could be wrong, but really it doesn't matter either way, it's not important to the story.

“You need to move back in, Steve,” Nat whines at him over the phone.

“Have you found you deadly eight legged Satan yet?” he asks sarcastically.

“No, but the dishes are piling up and no one but you does them. Also how often do you vacuum? Do you even bother to vacuum Clint’s room? Oh my god, I can’t vacuum, I might suck up Shelly!” she says, sounding far more concerned with the life of an arachnid than she should.  

“For god’s sake do not enter Clint’s room, I did that once and a chipmunk ran out. A fucking woodland creature, Nat, don’t risk it. Also tell Thor the dishes are now his responsibility, he’ll do them, he does Loki’s laundry because Loki told him to. And who cares if you suck Shelly up with the vacuum, that beats your deadly pet killing someone off, what if it escaped the house?” he asks. He shuddered to even think about it.

“Oh look, Shelly! I found the spider, you can move back in,” Nat says, relieved. She was so faking it and they both new it.

Steve snorts, “if you seriously think I’m dumb enough to fall for that you are wrong, pics or it didn’t happen,” he says. His phone buzzes twice and he checks it, finding two selfies with Nat and her disgusting pet.

“Fine. I will consider re-entering my spider infested home,” he says, depositing his phone on the couch with Tony.

Tony picks up the phone and starts laughing, “you might want to hold off on that, you’re in both of these pictures,” he says, handing the phone back to Steve, who looks closer and does indeed find himself in the background of both pictures, blurry but there.

“God Damnit Nat, you find your hell spawn so I can get my shit without worrying about your fucking spider traveling here with my underwear,” he snaps. It grossed him out just thinking about it, he was actually kind of surprised he was the only one who fled the house, Loki and Thor weren’t fond of Nat’s deadly choice in pet either.

“Why would you be getting your shit? You don’t even like your soul mates; you don’t want to live with them. You want to live with us and do our dishes,” she says, not doing a very good job at selling her argument.

“Oh my god, I might not like Tony but at least he doesn’t try to get me to stay with the very inciting offer of being his house elf,” he says, rolling his eyes.

“I have maids to clean my shit,” Tony says, shuffling some papers around.

“If you’re looking for the papers Pepper sent over they’re in the red folder, not the green one,” he tells Tony. He picks up the red folder and flips through the pages, apparently having found what he was looking for and settles back into his spot on the couch.

“Oh my god Steve, you’re hardly a house elf you dramatic asshole, no wonder Tony is your soulmate. Now come home and clean things, Shelly isn’t even deadly to people, you’d need more venom to take you out than what she has to offer. It probably wouldn’t be fun to get bit though… but still, she isn’t deadly. She’s probably scared, the poor thing, lost in a huge house…” she trails off, feeling way too much sympathy for an eight legged spawn of the devil in Steve’s opinion.

“Find your spider and I’ll _consider_ coming back,” he says and hangs up.

Tony looks over the couch, “we’re growing on you! I knew we would!” he says excitedly, clapping his hands and bouncing in his seat.  

Steve glares at him, “go fuck yourself,” he snaps.

Tony snorts, obviously not taking the comment personally, “I have a very healthy relationship with myself, thank you,” he chirps, going back to his papers. Bucky looks at him and squints, titling his head to the side like he doesn’t believe Tony’s assessment of himself.

“Jump off a cliff,” Steve says, curious to see how Tony could make that positive. It was kind of a game they had developed and so far Tony was winning, it irritated him.

“Cliff diving is actually fun,” Tony says without missing a beat.

Bucky shakes his head, fisting his hand in his hair, “why?” he whispers. Steve starts laughing and Tony looks personally offended that Bucky managed to get a positive reaction before he did.

*

It’s been awhile since he’s had the time to draw but he figured he had nothing better to do so he stole some of Tony’s note pads and pencils and went to the roof to draw the skyline. After an hour of attempting to get it right and failing he debates on giving up. “Ah, there she is,” he hears someone whisper behind him, “my manic pixie dream girl.”

He turns and finds Bucky and Tony half hidden behind a plant, probably watching him draw, and starts laughing. “I’m not _like_ other girls,” he says dramatically, “I do obscure things that other girls don’t do, like read, and wear baggy sweaters. Actually, this would be Tony if he was a woman,” he says.

Tony makes and offended noise and Bucky snickers, “don’t you shake your head, you so would be the ‘I’m not like other girls’ type and you totally wouldn’t even pull your head out of your ass and realize that you are like other girls,” he says, bumping Tony’s shoulder with his own.

“That is not true!” Tony protests, “and even if it was, Pep would pull my head out of my ass by force and slap some sense into me. I can’t believe you two think I’d be the ‘not like other girls’ type!” Tony says, offended.

“Tony, like ninety percent of your current identity is ‘I’m not like _those_ people, I’m _fun,_ ’” Steve points out, “it really isn’t that much of a stretch to assume you’d claim to not be like other girls, if you wouldn’t sound like an idiot you’d claim you weren’t like other guys now,” he says.

Bucky laughs and sits across from him, Tony quickly joining because he didn’t like being excluded. “You know what guys, for the record, I am not like other guys, or other girls, or other people in general, I am a league unto my own,” he says haughtily, dropping his feet in Bucky’s lap and spreading out over the small outdoor couch.

“Oh my god,” Bucky snorts, “you are so like other people, Tony, you’re not _that_ original,” he says. Tony looks so offended Steve starts laughing again.

“Is this how it always is? Tony claiming he’s a special snowflake, you informing him he’s an average snow flake and him getting offended by that?” Steve asks, setting his drawing aside. It looked like shit anyways.

“I _am_ a special snow flake!” Tony protests, upset that Steve thought otherwise.

“Yes,” Bucky answers him, “except he is actually a special snow flake,” he smiles at Tony, who looks triumphant.

“Ha, he says I’m a special snow flake!” Tony says excitedly, “take that!”

“You are not, and Bucky’s opinion so does not count, he’s biased,” Steve says, laughing at the scandalized looks he gets.

They talk for a while and Steve learns that Tony has perhaps the oddest self-esteem he’s ever come across. Tony either thought he was absolute trash or the greatest thing that has ever walked this earth with absolutely nothing in between. He also wasn’t afraid to hold anything back, happily telling Steve whatever he wanted to know. Bucky on the other hand was much more reserved, more content in watching than actually participating. Steve has spent enough time with damaged spies, with himself, to know Bucky’Cs symptoms. What surprised Steve was Bucky’s suspicion towards him, he hid it well but Steve was well trained and spent plenty of time with Natasha, he knew hyper vigilance when he saw it.

This was especially surprising because Tony didn’t seem to share any of Bucky’s reservations. But then Tony was reckless, Steve knew, and Bucky wouldn’t have the space to be reckless if he did actually have a job similar to Steve’s old job.

“Do you ever miss working for S.H.I.E.L.D?” Bucky asks basically out of nowhere. The question was designed to throw him off, he knew, but he wasn’t surprised, if he had Tony’s resources he’d look himself up too. Even if he had been caught off guard he knew better than to show it, he’s led way to many interrogations to ever show surprise during one.

“Sometimes,” he says truthfully, “its way better than working in a coffee shop that’s for sure, there were no pigs in S.H.I.E.L.D bathrooms, and people washed their fucking hands,” he says, wrinkling his nose.

“You find pigs in coffee shop bathrooms?” Tony asks, frowning.

“Once. Peggy found a pair of shitty underwear on the floor one time, and Clint found a crack addict, believe me, weird shit happens in coffee shops. One time a kid managed to get behind the counter without anyone noticing and crawled into a cupboard. Thank god Loki has good reflexes otherwise that kid would have had hot coffee dropped on its head when it jumped out to freak Loki out.” Loki had been some pissed about that and chewed the kid’s parents out pretty good before stomping off to brood in the kitchen.

Tony wrinkles his nose, “ew. Thank god I’m the CEO instead of the janitor,” he says.

“Given the stories I’ve heard you should be glad you don’t have to clean up after yourself,” Bucky says, making a face.

“Hell, if the stories _I’ve_ heard are true you should be happy you even have people that are willing to clean up after you,” he says. Even if only ten percent of what he heard was true he still wouldn’t envy the person who had to deal with the messes Tony made.

“Okay, you know what, I am not that bad,” Tony says, “Bucky don’t you make that face at me, you live with me, you know I’m mostly clean. Stop making faces, its true!” Tony protests.

“Your maids are clean Tony, not you, left to your own devices you’d probably die of a bacterial infection,” Bucky says. Steve, at least, is happy they are off the topic of S.H.I.E.L.D. He had no idea if either Tony or Bucky would be able to feel anything through the soul bond, some people never felt anything at all, but he didn’t particularly want to find out if he was caught in a lie. There were some things that he had no choice but to keep secret.

“So why did you leave S.H.I.E.L.D anyways,” Bucky asks after he gets annoyed with arguing with Tony about whether or not he’d die of an infection if he had to clean up after himself.

“T.A.H.I.T.I,” he answers honestly and somewhat cryptically. And there would be one of those things he couldn’t ever talk about, not only would people freak out if they knew about it, but Coulson would probably die or worse. He wasn’t risking that, not when Clint and Nat already lost Coulson once. Bucky gives him suspicious looks but let’s Tony take the conversation to other places.

*

Tony was more than a little surprised when Steve noticed something was off with him before Bucky did, particularly because Steve did his best to avoid them both at all costs. Nat still hadn’t found her spider and by now Peggy had found out and fled to Pepper’s, making excuses to her boss for both her and Steve. “Are you okay?” Steve asks when he stumbles and almost trips. Thankfully he catches himself before he face plants and embarrasses himself.

“Yeah, I’m fine,” he lies. His blood toxicity has steadily been rising and he ran out of options for a replacement core for the reactor weeks ago. He was pretty much fucked and he had no idea what he was supposed to do about that other than accept it.

Steve obviously doesn’t buy it; he could feel it more than see it in Steve’s expression. That would suck, he’s heard plenty of stories about soul mates feeling each other die. At least Bucky would have Steve, Tony could feel Steve’s feelings changing even if he wasn’t yet aware of it. “Bullshit,” Steve says, calling him on his shit. Well damn, he was hoping to avoid this and he figured if he could keep it from Bucky he’d be able to keep it from anyone.

“Yeah, because you know anything about me,” he snaps, falling back on his go-to problem solver; lashing out.

Steve snorts, “maybe not, but I know that your hand eye coordination has to be better than what I’ve seen with you being an engineer and all, and I know that you’ve been spending more time in the bathroom than usual, and I know that despite spending hours in your lab you aren’t getting anything done because Pepper has been on your ass about work. So what’s going on?” he asks, seemingly unperturbed by Tony’s snippiness.

Tony flounders because he’s never been very good at lying and nothing seems to be popping into his brain to explain his symptoms. So he panics and tells the truth, “fine,” he says, “the core that powers my arc reactor is killing me, it has been for some time now and I’m out of options. I’m totally fucked and I have like two months to live if I’m lucky,” he snaps. He could have predicted a million and one reactions Steve would have had to that but none of them would have included Steve bursting into tears.

“Ugh, no, stop that,” he says awkwardly, he never was good with dealing with feelings, his own or other people’s. “That was just a joke, a really, really bad joke,” he lies, wincing.

“It was not,” Steve wails, “I can tell!” Tony kicks himself mentally; he should have just kept his damn mouth shut because now he had no fucking clue what to do.

“I don’t even know why I’m crying,” Steve sniffs, “I don’t even like you. Or Bucky,” he says and starts to cry harder. Tony stands there awkwardly, watching in a sort of fascinated horror as Steve bawls over him dying when he claimed he didn’t actually care.

“I thought you were on drugs, not fucking dying!” he yells, wiping his nose on his sleeve. “You sonofabitch, you can’t fucking die, I just met you!” he yells. Tony just stands there because he was so totally clueless as to what to do. Apparently Steve was an angry crier, okay; he so could not work with that.

“Ugh-” he starts cut Steve cuts him off.

“You shut the fuck up!” Steve yells, “you do not get to come into my life, make me feel things for you, and then die you… you…you _Umbridge_ ,” he snarls, apparently unable to come up with a better insult. “What the fuck kind of sadist does that? “ he yells, “you can’t just make people care about you and then leave,” Steve whispers, losing steam fast and dissolving into tears all over again.

Bucky choses that very inopportune moment to enter the scene, looking between Tony and Steve, obviously very confused on what was happening. Tony flails around shrugging and unsure of what to say. Steve smacks his hand away from him, “don’t you point your sausage fingers at me!” he yells, apparently gathering more energy to fight. Tony stared because he was an emotionally stunted moron with no fucking clue how to deal with small angry blonde men.

“What the hell is going on? Tony what did you do?” Bucky asks, speaking over Steve’s loud crying.

 

“What the hell, why is this my fault?” he asks, aware that it was dumb to be offended about that but upset nonetheless.

“Oh for god sakes Tony, of course it was you. Steve, what happened?” Bucky asks gently. That was a bad move because Steve turns his anger on him, the poor guy.

“You people are fucking sadists is what happened,” he shrieks, “why the fuck would you even bother to try and get to know me when the two of you knew Tony was dying!” he yells, flailing his arms around.

“Wait, _what_? I thought you got hurt playing super hero and that’s why you were acting so strange!” Bucky snaps, glaring at Tony.

Steve gasps, looking from Tony to Bucky and back again, “You didn’t tell Bucky! You selfish, soggy ass paper snow flake made by a vision impaired first grader! And what the fuck do you mean playing super hero? What the hell else don’t I know?” Steve shouts. Bucky gives up on glaring at him for a second to give Steve a weird look but it doesn’t last long, unfortunately.

Tony reverts to Plan B in his list of Things To Do When Things GO Very, Very Wrong, “I’ll give you some credit, that insult was a mouthful,” he jokes. That was a bad move because Steve punches him in the face. He doesn’t have time to catch himself before he lands on his ass on the ground. Bucky doesn’t even try to catch him.

“Fuck you, and fuck everyone who has anything to do with you, and fuck JARVIS too!” Steve yells and stomps away, still crying. Bucky takes off after him, leaving Tony to process what the fuck just happened by himself.


	7. That isn’t protection, that’s torture

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Guys look, I made a playlist all by myself! (If y'all knew me in real life you'd be proud I managed to work the new fangled technology lol). I spent like like a total of five hours on this playlist because I am Starbucks trash (also I didn't want to do my school work). 
> 
> Anyways if you want to listen to this angsty thing you can find it here: https://8tracks.com/lovleylokiloxx/if-i-survive-then-i-ll-see-you-tomorrow 
> 
> I hope you enjoy it if you listen to it! Be prepared, I love me some angst so that is pretty much what the entire playlist is. 
> 
> Also kind of suicide warning but not.

He had no idea what the hell was happening and that freaked him out. He didn’t even _like_ Tony but since he found out he was dying he felt like he was in a free-fall into the depths of hell. God, that was so over dramatic. Bucky hadn’t even bothered to try and comfort him, he just sat there and cried too, which made things like a thousand times more depressing. Eventually he had drifted off into a fitful sleep and in the morning he took off before anyone woke up.

*

Peggy was very unhelpful, “Steve you can’t be mad at your soul mates because they kept things from you, you haven’t exactly been forthcoming either,” she points out.

“That is not the same!” he protests, “my secrets either have nothing to do with them or they will compromise national security, how the hell is that the same as purposefully hiding the fact that you’re dying?” he snaps. He, for one, is very offended by this comparison because his resistance to the whole soul mate thing wasn’t going to permanently alter any lives. Tony and Bucky lived just fine without him before; they could continue living without him after meeting him too. Tony on the other hand decided it was a great idea to fuck both his damn soul mate over by hauling of and _dying_ without actually telling anyone what the fuck was going on.

Peggy sets her tea down on the small table they were sitting at, “you know damn well I’m not talking about S.H.I.E.L.D’s secrets, Steve. You can’t resist giving up any information about yourself at all and expect Tony to lay everything out on the table, it’s hypocritical. Not to mention it’s no wonder he didn’t tell you and Bucky, the first thing both of you did was leave him there to die, literally, can you really blame the guy for not saying anything when that’s how the two of you reacted?” She’s making sense and Steve doesn’t like it. So he takes a page from Tony’s book and leaves before things can get real, thankfully Peggy lets him.

When he gets back to his hotel room he half expects to find Tony there, ready to pester the shit out of him. He doesn’t and that makes him sad for some reason. He throws himself on his bed and falls asleep, emotionally exhausted and in need of a way to escape.

He wakes up sometime later to someone pounding on the door. He’s tempted to tell whomever it is to fuck off but he figures someone else shouldn’t have to suffer because he’s upset so he answers the door instead. He’s rather surprised to find Natasha there, looking ready to murder him until she gets a good look at his face. Then she just looks sad, which kind of pisses him off. He didn’t need her pity, or anyone else’s for that matter. He sighs and steps aside, “come in I guess,” he says, sounding like absolute shit.

Natasha perches on the bed, arranging herself so she is comfortable before she pats the space beside her. He’s almost tempted to run considering how pissed off she looked less than thirty seconds ago but he figures she would catch him if he tried anyways so he sits. “I initially came to bitch you out but now I kind of feel bad for you,” she says. He isn’t so exhausted that he can’t glare at her for that, she knew how he felt about people feeling bad for him.

“Don’t give me that look, Rogers, I know what it’s like to have a soul mate die, it fucking sucks and I’d really rather not have you experience that. its worse when they come back,” she says, looking haunted. Bother her and Clint had felt Coulson die, and even worse they felt his reanimation too. All three days of it. “God, I get this text from Peggy at the ass crack of dawn explaining the situation and you know what Phil says? ‘Oh my god, could you imagine?’. Do you have any idea how hard it is to not tell him what actually happened that day? Poor fucking Clint, he wasn’t trained to deal with this shit, frankly for the first time in my life I’m happy HYDRA tortured me into  being able to hold my emotions in check at all times. If they hadn’t I certainly wouldn’t have survived this long, neither would Phil either, if he found out the truth,” she says softly.

Steve rubs his temples, “look, I don’t mean to be rude or insensitive but is there a point to you dumping your emotional baggage on me?” he asks and regrets it immediately. That had sounded a thousand times less insensitive in his head.

Nat doesn’t seem to be upset by it though, or maybe she was and she was just hiding it, he never could get a very good read on her. “Yes. The knowledge that we’re keeping from Phil is to protect him, what makes you think that Tony wasn’t doing the same? You can’t be mad at him for not wanting to taint what little time you have left with the knowledge that he’s dying,” she says. If it wasn’t her he’d probably punch her in the face, he didn’t really have a death wish though.

“You’re trying to keep Coulson from going nuts, what you’re doing is genuinely helping Coulson. Tony is just being selfish because he doesn’t want to deal with reality or what would happen to me and Bucky when he actually died. I mean really Nat, who the hell does he think he’s fooling? Not telling us he’s dying isn’t helping anyone, it’s leaving Bucky and I with inevitable guilt that we didn’t notice he was dying. For the rest of our lives we would going to wonder how we didn’t notice, would things have been different if we did? Did he suffer? Did he even think we cared if we didn’t even know something was wrong? Did he hate us for that? I would. Not to mention Bucky and I would be in constant worry that the other was going to drop dead at any moment, and what if we didn’t see it? One already died without us noticing, could we be selfish enough to not notice again? That isn’t protection Nat, that’s torture,” he whispers.

Nat pulls him in close and hugs him tight. He lets her because truth be told he could use a hug or ten. “You need to tell him this,” she says. he doesn’t respond because he doesn’t know if he could handle that. He was being selfish he knew, but he didn’t want to get closer to Tony if the eventual end of their relationship was Tony’s death. God knows what that would do to him, avoiding Tony was self-preservation really, he was entitles to that much. Especially when he never intended to feel anything at all.

*

Tony had full well expected Steve to run off but Bucky had come as a surprise, he thought that they were closer than that. Or maybe Bucky was so scared of losing the tenuous hold he had on his own life that he decided to throw it away before it could destroy him. Tony understood, if he was holding a live bomb he’d dive in the opposite direction too, the fact that he didn’t when he had the chance was the reason they were in this mess to begin with. The last thing he expected was to get a phone call from a very pissed off British woman saying Steve was in the hospital.

He ran like hell anyways, he was pretty sure that was the fastest he’s ever moved his whole life, actually. Though that didn’t mean much, he always made a point not to hurry unless he didn’t have to be on time somewhere, then he sped everywhere he needed to go. It drove Pepper nuts.

“What the hell happened?” he asks when he gets there. Pepper was already there with Peggy, which was just odd to him, and Peggy looked about ready to murder him. Frankly she should keep her looks to herself, this was not his fault.

“Did you feel anything… odd about an hour or so ago?” she asks, giving him shrewd looks.

“Ugh, I passed out? But you probably already know I’m dying so that’s pretty par for the-” Pepper slaps him, hard.

“You selfish sonofa-” she starts but Peggy pulls her back before she can work herself into full rant mode.

“What about before that? Any desire to suddenly off yourself?” she asks in a cheery tone that did not belong with that sentence.

“Ugh, no? What the hell is going on here? Cuz if you think Steve tried to off himself he doesn’t really seem like the type. He’s more like the type that would come to hate life so much he continues to keep on living just to piss life itself off,” he says.

Peggy snorts, “yeah, that is so Steve. There aren’t really many reasons a person would walk into traffic though,” she says.

Tony shrugs, “I do it all the time, people have breaks and I’m usually in a hurry,” he says flippantly.

“You’re never in a hurry you lying sack of shit, don’t you dare blame your reckless death wish on trying to be on time,” Pepper snaps, stepping forward, probably to smack him again. He steps back as Peggy pulls Pepper back again. So maybe he kind of wanted to die a little, it was a new experience, of course now he was a little pissed that it wasn’t his choice but that was a matter for another day.

“Look, I don’t know what happened, just do me a favour and don’t say anything,” Peggy says.  He tells her he won’t and Pepper gives him a look, probably knowing he absolutely was not going to keep that promise.

A half an hour later a doctor comes and gets them, looking harassed because Steve was not cooperating apparently. Peggy sighed and rubbed her temples and Pepper gives him another look, she’s dealt with him in the hospital to know he was also very uncooperative. Peggy asks if she can see him and the doctor says he needed rest more than visitors and that she should come back the next day. Tony asks a few questions and manages to weasel the Steve’s room number out of the doctor before he takes off laughing like a manic, narrowly missing Pepper’s grab at his clothing.

The doctor is only stunned for a minute before he takes off after Tony, probably still confused and wondering why, exactly, he is chasing Tony Stark down a hallway. When he finds the room Bucky is already there waiting with the door propped open, waiting for him. He dives in the room and Bucky shuts the door in the poor doctor’s face and holds the knob with his metal hand. Tony snorted; they could have fun trying to open that. The doctor throws her hands up and Bucky grins, saluting her.

Steve snorts, “you guys are assholes,” he says, laughing softly.

“Takes one to know one,” Bucky says without missing a beat. Tony had to agree but he had more pressing matters at hand.

“Peggy thinks you tried to commit suicide,” Tony says, jumping into things head first as usual.

“What!” Steve and Bucky yell in sync.

“I did not try to commit suicide, I was in a hurry and admittedly I should have paid more attention to the traffic but I’m fine and now they refuse to let me go,” he whines.

Steve shuffles around, probably about to make a break for it but Tony pushes him gently back into the hospital bed. “Uh, no, you aren’t going anywhere,” he says, trying to sound like Pepper when she was being stern but it came out sounding more like his dad. Ew.

“But-” Steve starts and Bucky cuts him off.

“You look like a giant bruise, now lay your skinny ass back down,” he says, having more success in sounding like someone to be listened to than Tony had.

“I’m fine,” Steve insists, “I’ve had worse, way worse, and I was not held overnight for observation then. And tell them I did not try to commit suicide so if that’s why they’re holding me they can let me go,” he snaps, making a move to get up again. The doctor knocks on the door again, telling them to get out so Bucky breaks the door knob off and dangles it in front of the small window for the doctor to see. Poor woman, Tony almost felt bad for her Eventually they come to a deal to jail break Steve if he promises not to go running into traffic again and take it easy.


	8. Code Name: Captain America

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> I'm feeling ambitious so I'm going to try and get a second chapter up today too, we shall see how that goes. :)

 It turned out Tony was not to type to take ‘no’ as an answer unless that was what he wanted to hear, the poor doctors didn’t really stand a chance. He hated hospitals; he spent way too much time in them as a child and after S.H.I.E.L.D missions, so he was rather grateful to not get stuck in one again. However that meant dealing with dealing with Tony turning into an over bearing mother and fawning over him. He never was very good at accepting help and he was even worse at letting people help because they wanted to. This resulted in Tony being beaten with a pillow until he gave up and left the damn room, slinking away in defeat. Steve got the impression that Tony was only regrouping, he didn’t give up easily unless it was on himself.

He’s curled up on his bed with a book trying to get comfortable when Bucky comes in through the damn window. “There is a door you know,” Steve says without looking up.

“You probably would have tossed one of the soft covers at me and I didn’t feel like dodging books,” he says in way of an explanation. He sighs and sticks a book mark in the pages and sets the book aside, carefully shifting in an attempt to not irritate his extensive bruising. He was really regretting not looking where he was going now, but he had been in a hurry and not to off himself, he couldn’t even believe Peggy thought that.

Bucky drops a bunch of files on Steve’s bed, “you’re very hypocritical, you know that? I mean yeah, Tony is reckless, but _you_ of all people criticizing him for it? _Really_? This,” he picks up a folder, “outlines your training with S.H.I.E.L.D. You weren’t even there for twenty four hours before you tossed yourself on a grenade. This,” he picks up another file, “outlines a mission in which you decided it was a good idea to jump from a plane with no parachute. On this mission you ran into a burning building to save a twenty year old cat that was probably mostly dead anyways,” he throws another file aside, “here you decided to steal a fucking jet to go on a solo rescue mission for Peggy, who was in one of the largest HYRDA bases that was known to S.H.I.E.L.D at the time. You took a bullet for Clint here, got stabbed throwing yourself in front of Natasha here, blew an undercover mission you and Loki had been working on for months to stop Coulson from being tortured and ended up taking his place, you pulled Thor from a burning car that almost blew both of you up, and that’s just a few of your cases,” Bucky says, raising an eyebrow.

He sighs, he was hardly reckless, he knew the outcome of every one of those cases to a degree, and he’d lived through them all so he didn’t see the problem. “I’m a well-trained agent and spy, Tony is an engineer playing superhero in a metal suit trying to take out fucking terrorists, it is so not realistic to compare our situations,” he says. he knew what he was walking into before he went into is missions, Tony found locations of terrorist cells and fucked shit up, that was hardly the same thing. He was not very impressed when Tony had explained what the hell Bucky had meant by him playing superhero.

Bucky sighs and rubs his temples, “good lord the universe wants to give me a heart attack. Why the hell else would I get stuck with two stubborn, reckless, crazy ass soul mates? Come on though, you can’t really be mad at Tony because he’s doing exactly what you would just because he isn’t you. That doesn’t even make sense,” Bucky chides.

“Okay, I would not build myself a metal suit and go flying around the world blowing terrorists up, I’d be was less dramatic, I’d take one of S.H.I.E.L.D’s jets with the camouflage technology, then at least no one would see me,” he sniffs, offended that Bucky was lumping him in with Tony.

Bucky groans, “‘I’m not as dramatic as Tony, I’d take an invisible jet, not a flying metal suit!’ Do you two even listen to yourselves when you talk?” he asks, squinting at him.

Steve snorts, “that’s all Tony does is listen to himself talk. And I was being discreet, not dramatic,” he says haughtily.

Bucky sighs and collects the files he had strewn about, “if someone told me two years ago my soul mates would be the cause of my death I’d’ve laughed in their faces. Well, actually I probably would have stared blankly, maybe blink, but still. You get the point,” he says and sits on the bed, arranging himself comfortably against the pillows Steve wasn’t currently using. Tony had left him like sixty of the fucking things.

Steve settles against the pillows, “so what do you want to know?” he asks. He wasn’t dumb enough to think Bucky decided to visit just because, he obviously still wanted answers.

“Everything,” Bucky says simply.

He snorts, “that’s not going to happen. I’ll tell you what I can but you probably have most of that information and what you don’t have isn’t information I can give away,” he says.

Bucky nods, “what is T.A.H.I.T.I?” he asks, jumping strait to the heart of things. Looks like he wasn’t the only one who had things in common with Tony.

“Something that should have never existed, Coulson told Fury that and he didn’t listen. It’s probably going to cost him his sanity, maybe even his life. That’s all I can say and frankly that was too much,” he says. He really hoped that he was wrong about Coulson but Nat seemed sure that this was going to end in disaster and she would know better than him.

Bucky nods, “alright, why the hell you would choose to work in a coffee shop after you quit? That‘s a shit job for shit pay,” he says, wrinkling his nose.

“Ugh, okay, so Clint had what he thought was a great idea and very long story short it resulted in us all living together and working for minimum wage at a job we all hate. We have since decided that under no circumstances is Clint allowed to make plans again. Ever,” he says. Bucky continues to ask questions and he answers as best he could. He finds that Bucky is actually pretty good company and he was funny, even if his humour was kind of dark. He and Nat would get along well, he thinks.

“Ugh, that mission was awful,” he says when Bucky asks how they all got their code names, “so we were totally losing right, like our asses were grass. We’re all about to die and I see this thing on the ground, so I pick it up and throw it at the nearest guy and the damn thing smacks the guy down and bounces off of him and comes back to me. I figured it was a fluke but if I can do it twice and at least know another guy down, fine, so I do it again and the shield comes back. That was basically how I mimicked a god damn comic book character and accidentally found and 084. Coulson was the one that made the Captain America reference, he loves Captain America, and the name stuck. Thor and Loki don’t even sound like real names so they just kept those for code names, Nat came with the code name Black Widow, that’s a long story, Clint has crazy good eyesight and he’s an amazing archer so he got nicknamed Hawkeye, also by Coulson. Also my birthday is the fourth of July and my favourite colours happen to be red, white, and blue, no connection to the flag, I just like colour combination,” he wrinkles his nose. He could have gone his whole life without being labelled Captain America, thanks Coulson.   

Bucky snorts, “that is hilarious. Isn’t Captain America’s name Steve Rogers too?” he asks, snickering.

Steve resists the urge to smack Bucky, “yeah, but his last name has a ‘d’ in Rogers so it’s totally different, I don’t care what Coulson thinks,” he says, “So what’s your story? I have a feeling it’s a handful given your PTSD,” he says, shifting positions again. He always hated that he bruised easily; thankfully that car was slowing down anyways. At least he’d have a story to tell when he was drunk at new year’s parties. ‘One time I was a jackass to my soul mate so on my way back to his place to apologize I totally got hit by a car, Opps’.

Bucky sighs, “that is a very long and uncomfortable story,” he says, wincing.

“We all have a story Bucky, your past isn’t what matters unless you’re still the same person now as you were then,” he shrugs.

Bucky ducks his head, smiling slightly, “thank you,” he whispers.

*

He ends up falling asleep in the middle of a movie and when he wakes up he’s curled into Bucky’s side with Bucky’s metal arm draped around him. He yawns and falls back asleep quickly. A few hours he wakes up again and this time he finds Tony occupying the small space between his back and the edge of the bed with his head planted between his shoulder blades and his arms around his waist. He shifts forward to give poor Tony more room.

When he wakes up in the morning Bucky is gone and Tony has taken over most of the bed, limbs sprawled everywhere. His phone buzzes so he picks it up, finding a series of video messages from Natasha. Curious he opens the first one and Natasha’s face fills the screen, “I found Shelly and I’m filing it real time so you can’t claim it’s fake.” The camera turns to Loki asleep on the couch with one very fat spider on his cheek. He shudders; if that was him he would lose his shit.

The next message is Nat trying to gently prod Shelly into her insect cage without waking Loki up, Shelly was having none of this and refused to move off Loki’s cheek. The third message was Loki waking up and realizing there was a black widow on his face and freaking out. He grabs the spider off his face and tosses it so fast there has to be a record before vaulting over the back of the couch and running screaming to the basement.

The last video is Shelly in her cage, walking around and looking very agitated though Steve suppose he would be too if he was just thrown across the room. His laughing at Loki’s reaction to Shelly on his face wakes Tony up. He stretches and shuffles closer, “what’re you laughing at,” he mumbles, rubbing his eyes, looking sleepy. It was actually very adorable.

He shows the video to Tony, who shudders, “oh my god no wonder you moved out, I would not live under the same roof as that thing whether it was in a cage or not. I’d fumigate, twice,” he says. making faces.

“You are not fumigating the tower because you found one spider Tony, this is getting ridiculous,” Bucky says, appearing in the doorway.

“Don’t worry, Tony is not fumigating the tower, Nat found her spider. Come check out Loki’s reaction, it’s hilarious,” he says. Bucky wanders over and they all watch Loki flip out over the spider on his face, flopping around on the couch dramatically as he tosses the spider away. Bucky laughs so hard he has to sit down and Tony threatens to fumigate because what if Nat’s widow laid eggs in Steve’s shit. Steve informs him that he went through his stuff several times and found it spider and egg free, he was not chancing dozens of little widows running around, the only black widow he liked was Natasha.

“That is just wrong, spiders are freaks of nature, not pets, like I understand they are important and all that but no, they need to stop,” Tony says, shuddering.

“Oh don’t be so dramatic Tony,” Bucky tells him. Steve sides with Tony and they spend forty five minutes arguing about spiders until Pepper calls Tony and interrupts them. Steve texts Nat back that he was not chancing another deadly escape so he was staying at Tony’s and she was stuck with dish duty. She quickly texts back that Thor was now in charge of cleaning because no one else wanted to do it and Thor was too much of a sweetheart for his own good.

Steve was kind of waiting for the shoe to drop all day, things couldn’t possibly go good for very long when they were all avoiding the shitty reality that Tony was dying. It finally happens around dinner time when Tony nearly faints. For a few minutes everyone is totally silent before Bucky finally speaks, “you can’t just give up,” he whispers, his voice sounding to loud in such a quiet moment.

Tony sighs, looking exhausted all of the sudden, “I don’t have much of a choice, I’ve tried every element there is, nothing will serve as a powerful enough core without killing me faster or flat out failing,” he says, leaning against the door frame.

“Then make one,” Steve snaps, “it can’t be that hard,” he says. He admittedly knew shit all about science but still, that had to be possible… right?

“It doesn’t exactly work like that Steve, but that’s for failing spectacularly in your knowledge of science, it’s very endearing,” Tony jokes but it falls flat.  Well, Steve thought, at least he tried.


	9. Hydra is Actual Trash

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Sorry about the shit chapter name, but I stuck up two new chapters in one day, I think I should be forgiven lol.
> 
> Just a warning about some flashbacks for poor Bucky :( So if that might trigger you, fair warning, it isn't that bad, mostly just some reiteration of what we know from TWS but I throw it out there anyways.

Steve begins to sleep fitfully, having nightmares about caves, hot coals, bombs, scientists, pain, metal, pain, pain, pain. He doesn’t say anything about it because he doesn’t know what to make of the nightmares, he’s dealt with his fair share of torture, it came with working for S.H.I.E.L.D, but nothing like what he experienced in his dreams. He thinks that Bucky and Tony notice but neither of them says anything about it at first.

A week after this starts he manages to avoid sleep by pestering Tony in the lab but eventually he gives in and goes to bed, well aware of what awaited him. He hoped that he was exhausted enough to avoid dreaming at all but his luck was never very good when it came to this sort of thing. He falls asleep near immediately, but his dream is so real that he wasn’t really aware of that.

He sat in the chair like he was supposed to but he was confused, he didn’t understand why they needed to keep running, he was a ghost, untraceable. Just like they wanted, he always did things _exactly_ they way they wanted him too and it never seemed good enough, there was always something he did wrong. He didn’t understand why he was never good enough, he always did his best, always followed the instructions to the letter…

There was one thing though, the man with the pretty brown eyes… they wouldn’t tell him who he was, just that he was a mark. He hadn’t been able to follow through on that mission, something went wrong…

Breaking in had been surprisingly difficult, security was very good, cameras and sensors were everywhere but he managed. He found the mark in the kitchen, which was not where he was supposed to be. No matter, he’d be dead in the kitchen then. He was weak, his mark, and he didn’t resist when he was slammed into the wall. Oddly the man grins and says, “is that a knife on your pocket or are you happy to see me?” he asks, seemingly unaware that he was having difficulties breathing.

“There is a knife on my pocket,” he says, not understanding the mark’s question.

He laughs, kind of, with limited air supply that was difficult, “kinky,” he croaks out. He steps back, something about his words was vaguely familiar but he wasn’t sure what about them was significant, just that they were the most important words he has ever heard. That doesn’t make sense; hiss orders were the most important words he’s ever heard. He panics, trying to understand where this mission went wrong and his mark moves. He shrinks back immediately, unsure why he was suddenly very afraid of someone that so easily accepted his death only seconds ago.

“Are you okay?” the mark asks. He flees. The mark follows. For the first time that he can remember he becomes the hunted rather than the hunter…

“My name is James Buchanan Barnes but everyone calls be Bucky,” he whispers, repeating the words the man with brown eyes had told him not hours before. He didn’t understand how he kept getting found, he has never been found before, it was the only thing his masters seemed to take pride in and now that was gone…

“What?” one of the scientists whips around at his words, backhanding him across the face. He regrets saying them out loud immediately.

“He’s starting to remember,” one of the other scientists says.

“Wipe him,” says a third. He’s pushed back into his chair and he goes with little resistance, unsure of what was going on. He’s handed a mouth guard, which he takes gently, knowing better to accept it in any other way. He knows what is coming, he doesn’t know why, but that doesn’t matter. He closes his eyes and wishes for it to be over.  When the electroshock starts the only thing that doesn’t fade it the face of the brown eyed man, the look of kindness on his face upon looking at him was completely foreign, he didn’t understand what he did to receive that kindness. He decided he was going to find out. He knew everything about these people; it wouldn’t be difficult to escape them.

Steve wakes up screaming and drenched with sweat, unsure of what the hell just happened.

*

Tony had experienced the dreams before, unfortunately, so he was at least a little prepared when he started dreaming Steve’s memories. In his dream he wakes up naked lying on sheets that absolutely were not his favoured silk sheets and he was not impressed. He sits up and glares at the scratchy ass sheets, prepared to complain at his bedmate about poor taste in sheets. Only when he looks over he remembers two things; one, he has a soul mate now, two actually, and he remembers the woman lying beside him. “Oh my god no… I can’t have possibly done this twice, I don’t even remember drinking…” he whispers.

Beside him was one Peggy Carter, Pepper was going to fucking murder him, _Steve_ was going to murder him. Bucky had his chance; he didn’t follow through so Tony figured he was safe from him. Frankly he didn’t know which of his two potential murders was more terrifying, the trained spy who has probably tortured people forrealsies or Pepper. She didn’t need any extra credentials to be terrifying.

Peggy shifts, “I can feel you freaking out, what’s wrong?” she says lightly, brushing her brown hair out of her face.

Tony looks at her like she’s nuts because _hello_ , did she not understand that they signed their damn death warrant? “Uhh, we slept together, moron,” he says like it’s obvious. Peggy sits straight up and glared at him. Well shit, Pepper and Steve won’t get their crack at him; Peggy is going to murder him first.

“Excuse you?” she asks, clearly giving him a chance to change his answer before she eats him alive. How gracious.

“Uhhh,” he looks down and realizes what’s going on with a rush of relief. “Oh thank god, I’m not Steve, I’m Tony Stark. Totally did not need to see you naked before Pepper, assuming you and Pepper haven’t… whatever, that isn’t important. What’s important is that I did not betray Pep and Steve. Wow is this ever a relief, you don’t even know,” he says in a rush.

Peggy squints at him, “ _what_?” Tony is so relieved that he didn’t fuck things up with Steve and Peggy that he wakes up.

*

Bucky has dreamed Tony’s memories and he was not fond of the experience. Honestly every time he dreamed one of Tony’s memories he was sleeping with _another_ person, he’s never had a repeat face and that kind of disturbs him. He’s read up on soul mates dreaming each other’s memories and all of them say the same thing about that; that you dream your soul mates most important memories. He was rather annoyed that Tony’s most important memories were getting drunk and sleeping with random people he picked up in a bar.

He eventually learned that Tony didn’t necessarily think anything about those memories were important, but the purpose they served was. Tony avoided pain like the plague and to do this he drowned himself in anything that allowed him to escape for a little while, thankfully he wasn’t a fan of drugs aside from occasionally getting really high with Rhodey and convincing him eggs weren’t real. Bucky decided that he was never ever going to smoke marijuana if it made him dumb enough to believe that eggs weren’t real. Just to fuck with him Tony had had his cook make eggs the next day, Rhodey had been so confused. He still hated eggs to this day.

However Steve’s memories were different. When he dreamed he dreamed that he was strapped to a chair, an uncomfortably familiar sensation. Only Steve was being tortured with knives, that was odd, and Bucky could feel it wasn’t working. He could feel what Steve felt in that moment, the shocking amount of resolve Steve felt, he’d never give them what they wanted. They tried, oh they tried very hard, but nothing worked. Steve never even wavered. Bucky had never met someone who was so sure in a decision in his life and wondered if this was how Steve felt about everything, if he was always so… so… _certain_. Bucky took comfort that Steve had the ability to have an unwavering opinion about what the right thing was and in every dream he had Steve _always_ did the right thing.

*

Eventually Steve finds out he was dreaming memories and he knew they weren’t Tony’s given that Tony was the guy with the brown eyes. That had been uncomfortable an nauseating. And Bucky, poor Bucky, had felt his feelings towards the memories and thought that he felt that way about _him_. It had taken surprisingly little to convince Bucky otherwise, which had left Tony confused. Bucky then informs them that he had been dreaming Steve’s memories and he recognized the facial expression that Steve had made and the feelings that typically went with it. He was well aware that Steve wholeheartedly believed what he was saying.

Steve eventually asked about that weird memory with Rhodey wherein he was trying to convince Rhodey eggs weren’t real and Tony had burst out laughing. Bucky looked upset that he had to have this discussion. Tony had called Rhodey laughing and said, “eggs.” Rhodey told him to go fuck himself and hung up, which started a whole new round of laughter. Steve recorded it and made it his ring tone because Tony’s laugh was fantastic.

Sam had texted less than a minute later wanting to know what was so special about eggs and Steve ended up texting the story verbatim to him. Sam had called him laughing his ass off, Rhodey was whining about Tony not being able to use dying as an excuse to be an asshole. Steve starts to dream better memories after that, like the first time Tony got Bucky to laugh, and that time that Tony fell on his face trying to ski.

*

Tony was preparing papers to leave Stark Industries to Pep in his office but he needed something that required him to go down to storage. He didn’t actually remember what it was in the end. He happens to look over and find the boards of the scaled down design for Stark Expo propped against the wall and frowns. He steps closer and squints, ‘ _make an element,_ ’ Steve’s words float through his head. But he hadn’t even known where to begin with that, or if such a thing was even possible. The Stark Expo designs though… they appeared to also be the design of an atom. It was a long shot but what did he have to lose? His life? That was already going to go anyways.

He kind for felt bad for the people who worked at Stark Industries, they were way too used to him doing weird shit. No one even questions why he was dragging the old Stark Expo design out of the basement. Save for Pepper’s odd look everyone acted as if nothing was out of place. These poor people needed a raise.


	10. No Thanks, I'm a Vegetarian

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> This chapter is a bit short, but it's a little fun after the angst lol.

Steve got regular updates from Nat about what was going on at the house, including the eventful second escape of her spider. Peggy had returned after Nat caught Shelly for the second time and bought a new tank for the spider, much to Pepper’s dismay. Thor and Loki somehow broke the washing machine, Loki claims it was all Thor, Thor says it was Loki. Nat didn’t care who did what, just that she couldn’t clean her underwear. Sam and Rhodey regularly took over the living room to watch random comedy movies that Nat hated; Clint did his thing and finally learned to keep his mess in his own room. Steve was kind of annoyed at that, after living with the asshole for over a year he learns to keep his shit to himself _after_ he moves out, typical.

Despite the regular updates Steve did not expect the call from Loki. He frowns at the caller I.D and answers the phone, “hello?” he asks uncertainly. Aside from Darcy Loki never called anyone for any reason, it drove Thor nuts when Loki went on missions and didn’t call for three months.

“You need to teach me how to be likeable,” Loki says in place of a greeting. Steve probably shouldn’t have but he started laughing, it wasn’t his fault Loki being likeable was so laughable.

“Oh fuck you, Rogers,” Loki snaps.

“Lesson one, when you get pissed off don’t go for the throat, let it go,” Steve tells him, still snickering.

“Do I look like a fucking Disney princess to you?” he snaps.

“Queen actually, Elsa is a queen, Anna is the princess. And no, Disney princesses are likeable,” he says, enjoying Loki’s frustrated cursing. “Why, pray tell, do you need to be likeable?” he asks once Loki is done with his long string of insults.

“Darcy wants me to meet her mother and I am not good with families, I mean I ruined mine. Twice,” he says, sighing.

“Yeah, you’re probably fucked,” Steve says, feeling little sympathy for Loki. He did it to himself, if he held his tongue for like five seconds and thought things through instead of lashing out at everything that moved he wouldn’t have this issue. Though to be fair Odin was no better and he made zero attempts to try and actually work with Loki, instead tried to force Loki to do things his way. Frigga at least tried with Loki before he ruined that too. He hadn’t taken finding out he was adopted very well.

“Please” Loki blurts out, sounding desperate. Steve sighs and agrees but only because he felt bad for Loki because he had a negative two hundred percent chance of success.

*

He makes a trip back to the house just to witness Loki’s sure to be epic failure, bringing Bucky along because he could use a laugh. He would have brought Tony along too but he was engrossed in doing something in the lab so it was best to leave him be. Thor had found his camera specifically to record the event and Nat had already made a star shaped cake with ‘you tried’ frosted onto it. Darcy’s mother frowns and shifts her baby to her other hip, “do any of you have faith that he won’t screw this up?” she asks.

Thor starts laughing, “we all hope he succeeds, but we know the chances are low and we want to immortalize the event,” he says, wiggling the camera.

Sam snorts, “speak for yourself, we’re all counting on Loki’s failure,” he says, snickering. Bucky raises an eyebrow at Steve, who tells him to just wait, Loki was going to provide some quality entertainment.

Loki arrives home from work a few minutes later looking harassed, which already boded well for failure purposes. He drops his bag on the floor at the door and stomps into the living room looking ready to rant until he spots Darcy’s mom and freezes, looking pale and confused. Thor grins and lifts the camera; ready to capture Loki’s shining moment on camera. Loki looks like he’s swallowed an entire plate full of lemons and his ability to speak seems to have flown out the window. “Hello?” Darcy’s mom says, raising an eyebrow.

Steve had coached Loki’s ass for like two and a half hours and he already failed at everything Steve tried to teach him. That had to be some kind of record. “Um, yes, nice,” Loki vaguely gestures to the baby, “nice offspring. Darcy is also nice… offspring,” he says slowly, like he’s just realized that ‘nice offspring’ wasn’t exactly a compliment. He looks desperately in Steve’s direction and Steve shakes his head, Loki had already screwed this up, he couldn’t exactly help now. Loki sighs accepts defeat via meeting the parents.

Darcy’s mom tries to save the poor guy because she was nicer than the rest of them, “do you want to hold her?” she asks, shifting the baby forward to be transferred.

Loki takes a panicked step back, “no thanks, I’m a vegetarian,” he says and his eyes go wide when he realizes what he just said, “not that I would eat your child, not that one anyways,” his eyes go wider, “I have to go do… anything but this,” he says and flees the scene. Natasha starts laughing hysterically and signing at Clint to send the video to Coulson.

“Well that was eventful, Tony’s gunna be pissed he missed this,” Bucky says, laughing. Steve grins, Bucky didn’t laugh often so this was an accomplishment. He supposed he would forgive Loki for wasting his time coaching him because his failure amused Bucky.

*

Tony hadn’t really know what to expect when he took those boards home, now he was sitting in the middle of an enlarged hologram of his father’s design staring in wonder. “This appears to be a viable substitute for the core in your arc reactor,” JARVIS informs him. Tony nods; he already knew that from looking at it, it had all the correct properties.

“Dead twenty years and he’s still leagues ahead of me,” he says, spinning around to look at it one more time before shrinking the hologram and getting to work.

He knows that at some point Bucky or Steve, he isn’t sure which, come down but they don’t stay long so he doesn’t bother to stop working on trying to bring the element to life. He isn’t sure how much time had passed before the core was finally ready, it could have been hours, it could have been days. His sleep schedule had always been off, even as a kid, and Bucky’s sleeping patterns weren’t much better so he never seemed to notice when he was up for days until he was drop dead exhausted. He was fairly certain Steve had normal sleeping patterns before moving in but they were far out of whack now. He had adjusted quite well to the change but that was probably because his schedule working for S.H.I.E.L.D had likely been very hectic.

By the time he noticed that he was tried it was nearly three days later according to his phone. Shit, leaving Bucky alone for so long didn’t usually end well, he forgot to take care of himself more than Tony did. He only had like a half an hour or so left in the lab before the new and non-lethal reactor was ready and he couldn’t sense anything wrong with Bucky or Steve so he figured he’d just power through then pass the fuck out after he checked on them.

It turned out it was closer to an hour but he figured not dying in a month and a half was worth a little extra time and fitted the new reactor into his chest. Thankfully he managed Pepper free this time, he really needed to give her a raise, though he supposed Steve’s hands were small enough if he needed the extra help. Pepper would probably be happy about that given that she nearly killed him last time. He cleans up a little before giving up and leaving Dummy to it and heading back to the living space.

He finds the two playing Cards Against Humanity on the living room floor. He goes over to see what they had decided on, particularly Bucky because the concept of the game was totally lost on him. He picks up the black card, “‘it’s a shame kids these days are getting involved with,’” he reads aloud and picks up Bucky’s white card, “‘bees?’” he reads, “Buck that’s a good thing, you still don’t really get the game,” he picks up Steve’s card, “Tony Stark,” he reads and starts laughing harder than he really should. He was way too tired for his own good.

Steve holds up some cards, “pick one,” he says.

Tony draws a card, “hot pockets,” he reads.

Bucky frowns and Steve cracks up, “oh my god, Clint would so agree. No matter how many times he gets diarrhea he still buys the fucking things, Nat gets so annoyed.”

“I should have laid down a wind mill full of corpses,” Bucky complains. Steve and Tony start laughing and he sighs, “I knew that was funnier than bees. I fucking hate bees.”

“Next time, Buck,” Tony says, “ugh, so some good news. I, ugh, figured out a way to save myself, sort of, technically my dad figured it out but I made it. Turns out you can make a new element, my dad had mapped it out but I don’t think he actually made it, I did, and it was a viable replacement for the core of the arc reactor. So I guess the treatment I’ve been using to essentially stave off death will actually work now, so there’s that,” he says, trailing off when neither Bucky nor Steve react in any visible way. Both of them have managed to shut him out of the bod too, much to his annoyance, how the hell had Steve even figured that out so fast?

“Wait, so you did what I told you and made a new element?” Steve says, frowning, “you said you couldn’t do that!” he flails a hand around, outraged.

“Well I guess I was wrong,” he says, “is anyone happy that I’m not dying anymore?” he asks, a little insulted at the lack of reaction.

Bucky stares at him wide eyed, “did you just say you were wrong? Out loud?” he asks, shocked.

“Yeah, yeah, I’m full of surprises,” he says, still getting next to no reaction, “seriously, are you-” he’s cut off by Steve jumping up and kissing him. Well, this he was on board with.


	11. Now is not the Time, Natasha

Coulson managed to talk him and Nat into a mission, which was why they were bored as hell, and trying to solve this by playing never had I ever. The loser had to eat Clint’s black liquorice as punishment for not being adventurous. Nat sighs, she was a point behind, “never have I ever slept with a teacher,” she decides.

“Point for me,” Steve says, watching the unmoving scenery in front of him. Supposedly whoever lived there was selling information but nothing around or in the house had changed for hours except for the arrival of Bucky, who appeared forty five minutes before. Apparently this was a better option than dealing with Tony watching Sharknado again. Bucky probably didn’t think he knew that he was on the roof across from him but he wasn’t an idiot.

“The close quarters combat teacher at S.H.I.E.L.D academy?” Nat asks. He nods and squints at the first floor window of the house, did a curtain move? Probably not, he was just so bored he thought it did. Nat narrows her eyes, “I knew your pretty blowjob lips got you a higher grade in that class,” she says and jabs him in the side with her finger.

He’d be mad but she was right, “yeah probably. He was a great lay, you shoulda cheated on what’s his face, you already had a bad reputation,” he points out. Being her friend was great because no one ever fucked with him lest he tell her about it; people who pissed Nat off had a nasty habit of disappearing.

“Everyone thought I was a Russian assassin!” she protests.

“Okay, but you are Russian and every guy you swindled out of money is dead now, that’s why S.H.I.E.L.D picked you up, Black Widow. I mean the rumours were kind of true.” Kind of, Nat didn’t actually kill any of her marks, they did actually die of natural causes, but it was still one hell of a coincidence.

“Okay, they were not even close to true! It isn’t my fault old white dudes die fast after giving me everything they own. I still have most of that money, S.H.I.E.L.D thinks they took it but actually sent everything overseas save for the houses, S.H.I.E.L.D got those,” she grins and looks back to the house. Nothing, still.

“Never have I ever accidentally blown up my soul mate,” he says.

Nat drops her water in the cup holder, “that was one time, and Coulson said it was fine,” she glares at him.

“Nat, how do you accidentally blow up your soul mate?” he raises an eyebrow.

She sighs, “we were fooling around in one of the labs and knocked some stuff together that resulted in a bit of a boom,” she says, playing down the event significantly.

“Nat, that room had to be completely remodelled and both you and Coulson had extra crispy arms for a week,” he says.

Nat gives him a look, “never have I ever had a threesome,” she says, marking a point for herself down.

“Point for me,” he says boredly. He hadn’t even seen a car or a person on this street for the last hour. He hated stakeouts.

“Oh, you’ve slept with Tony and Bucky?” she asks, wiggling her eyebrows.

“No, not them,” he says, “I have had a long list of other sexual partners you know,” Nat gives him a look, “fine, Peggy and I picked up a guy in a bar once. Don’t tell her I told you that, I will deny ‘till I die if you do,” he warns.

Nat squeals, “Steve, you slut!” she yells, smacking his arm.

“Ow, I am not a slut! I just enjoy a little foray into the unknown, nothing wrong with that,” he says, defending his choices.

“Oh my god you’re kinky!” Nat squeals again, bouncing around in her seat, “oh my god, I am so going to have fun gossiping with Tony about this!” She claps her hands in glee, grinning in a way that spelt trouble.

“No, you will keep your damn mouth-” the back door of the car opens and Coulson slips in, holding a briefcase.

“Drive,” he says, offering no explanation.

“Ugh, why-” Steve starts but he’s cut off by someone opening the back door again. He probably should have noticed Coulson was followed but he’d been mostly inactive for a year so he figured the slip up was forgivable.  

“Mind explaining what you’ve been doing sitting here for the last five hours?” the guy asks. First of all they had been sitting there for close to seven so he was obviously blowing smoke out his ass, he had no clue what was going on.

Nat leans into the back seat, “oh were just taking a little _foray_ into the unknown, if ya know what I mean,” she says in a think Southern accent, winking saucily.

This confuses the guy, “you seriously expect me to believe that you somehow get off on doing nothing?” the guys says, voice dripping with disbelief.

Coulson looks offended, “how we get off is our business, don’t kink shame,” he says, reaching over and shutting the door in the guy’s face. Steve hits the gas before he gets an extra passenger with god knows what intentions.

Nat snorts, “oh my god, don’t kink shame? You’re like the most vanilla person ever,” she says, laughing at Coulson.

“I am not vanilla!” he says, offended at the suggestion. Nat’s response is interrupted by a gun shot through the back window.

“You should have seen his face when I brought up handcuffs,” Nat says, leaning around and firing a shot back. There is not return shot so Steve assumes she hits her target and turns a corner, hopefully avoiding being seen by any backup.

“What is sexy about handcuffs Natasha? I am not a criminal,” he says defensively, flattening himself across the back seat to avoid being shot.

Steve snorts, “oh my god wow, you are vanilla. Handcuffs are like super tame,” he says.

“What’s wrong with vanilla?” Coulson asks, still on the defensive.

“Nothing, but I have an uncomfortable amount of knowledge about Clint and Nat in the bedroom and your lack of kink is a little surprising,” he says. He really wished he didn’t have that knowledge but so had Peggy, that was why they switched rooms. He should have listened to Loki when he said not to do it. Really, he should have known when Loki decided he would rather room with Thor than across the way from Nat. He was an idiot sometimes.

“What?” Coulson says, upset, “am I boring?” he asks, distressed over the possibility.

Nat leans around to look at Coulson, “nah, a little vanilla is a refreshing sometimes actually,” she says, grinning.

Coulson looks relieved, “oh, well that’s good,” he says, letting out a breath of relief.

Steve glances in the rear view and finds a car there. Given the lack of traffic on this street he assumes it was the backup they missed a couple minutes ago. “Check that briefcase for a tracking device,” he says.

Coulson opens it carefully and moves some things around, swearing a few seconds later. “Damnit, I should have caught that,” he says tossing the device out the busted back window.

“Okay, so assuming all three way soul mates work the same way Clint, Coulson, and I do and two are kink and one is vanilla how do you Tony and Bucky work?” she asks, “I already know you’re secretly kinky, does that make Bucky vanilla or is Tony blowing smoke out his ass and _he’s_ the vanilla one?”

Steve eyes the car behind them, they hadn’t done anything yet and that made him suspicious, “no,” he answers Nat’s question.

“Okay, but what does that mean?” Coulson asks and a shot goes off, blowing out a back tire.

“Oh god Damnit,” Steve yells as they spin out, “we can continue this conversation never,” he says as they come to a stop. Coulson bails out the side with the briefcase and its contents. Steve dives out after Nat, barely avoiding being shot.

“No!” Nat yells as she takes cover behind a fire hydrant, “explain yourself!” she yells and leans out to shoot whoever was getting out of the car. She hit the guy’s knee but that didn’t seem to stop him, Coulson shoots from behind a stray parked car and hits the guy in the neck. Thankfully he goes down, which left two other guys that Steve seen.

A bullet hits the wall beside his head and he dives to the left, “no means no you savage!” he yells back. He flattens himself to the ally wall and scans the area, finding someone on the roof. “Are you fucking kidding me?” he mumbles. At least the people who were covering this area had crap communication of the guy from the alley they were originally parked in didn’t know how long they were sitting there.

“What the hell is this, Coulson?” Nat yells as she doges another bullet and hides behind the opposite end of the car Coulson was behind. “And Steve, I didn’t ask for the definition of ‘no’, I asked for a fucking explanation!” she yells over to him.

Steve glances back to the roof to find the guy missing and frowns; he scans other nearby roofs and comes up empty. Well alright then, he’d deal with that when he wasn’t getting shot at. “I mean no one is vanilla, was that not clear?” he yells, diving behind the dumpster, “God Damnit Coulson, I’m still bruised from being _hit by a car_!” he shouts. He repositions himself and spots a bit of movement from behind a store sign and shoots.

“I may have lied a tiny bit,” Coulson yells, “it’s not information that was being sold, its 084’s, that’s why I chose you two for this, we have a leak and I know it isn’t either of you!” Steve swears under his breath, didn’t S.H.I.E.L.D have protocol to prevent this shit? Nat shoots to the same place he did and the person behind the sign falls. He rolls his eyes; he should have just let her take care of it to begin with.

“Coulson you fuck!” Nat yells at him, “and like on a scale of one to ten, Steve, how kinky are we talking?” she asks.

He frowns at the mouth of the ally, “is this really relevant right now?” he yells back to her. He scans the roof again for the unaccounted for person and finds nothing. Damnit.

“Absolutely,” she yells back to him.

“I don’t know, I just have a vague impression of what they like,” he hears something behind him and turns, shooting the guy at the end of the ally before he even got close. Well that was everyone from the car but there was still the problem of the guy on the roof plus whoever else might want that 084 back.

He hears a soft thump behind him and turns, ready to shoot but it was Bucky, “you had better thank your luck stars my reflexes aren’t shit otherwise I would have killed you,” he chides. Who even does that? Jumping out of nowhere and nearly getting shot by your soul mate, who dumb was that?

“You guys are good, whoever these people were they weren’t very organized,” he says in place of an explanation.

“Fine, don’t jump out of nowhere, I just might shoot you next time,” he says and gets to his feet, scanning the area again. There appeared to be nothing there.

“Don’t trust me?” Bucky asks, his cocky tone unsuccessfully hiding the hurt undertone to his words.

“No,” he says honestly, “I’ve never worked with you,” he says. for all he knew Bucky would have some sort of flashback and try to take him out. That would be very unpleasant.

“Well,” Bucky murmurs, “I guess I can’t complain, that’s actually smart. Tony trusted me way too much and he almost died for it. Several times,” he says.

Steve ignores the comment in favour of finding Nat and Coulson. They were arguing behind the car over his sex life of all things, “just leave him be, it’s none of your business,” Coulson says.

Nat looks scandalized, “Coulson we have a golden opportunity here, we get to find out exactly what Tony Stark gets up to in the bedroom, with _Steve_ ,” she says, waving her hands around for emphasis.

“Well he used to be into asphyxiation until I almost choked him to death during a flashback,” Bucky says, deadpan.

Coulson looks horribly embarrassed but Nat grins, “tell me more,” she says. Coulson looks at her in horror but she purposefully ignores him in favour of Bucky.

“Actually he’s still into that, he just doesn’t want to bring it up after, you know, you almost choking him to death,” Steve says, unsure of where exactly that knowledge came from. Coulson face was priceless.

*

“So let me get this straight, in the middle of a shootout you decided to grill Steve on my kinks?” Tony asks Natasha, tilting his head to the side in question.

She shrugs, “it was as good a time as any other,” she says.

Coulson groans, “can we please drop this subject? I already have an uncomfortable amount of knowledge of what Tony likes in the bedroom,” he says, looking uncomfortable.

“Okay but we don’t even know that much,” Nat says, “we know like three things, this is inadequate knowledge.”

Coulson squints at her, “I knew he was into orgasm denial before I had even seen him in person, that is an uncomfortable amount of knowledge to have about someone you’ve never met,” he says, making a face.

“Oh come on, when you and Clint met he told you he wanted to bend your pretty ass over the table and fuck you silly, and you practically did it right there, you didn’t him,” she argues, “and ally sex is probably the most adventurous you’ve been,” she says.

Coulson buries his face in his hands, “and then the next day I found out I was his handler, that was so embarrassing. This is why I don’t try new things,” he mumbles. That had been hilarious, especially because they had both been too drunk to remember that they had said each other’s tattooed words until the next day. He had had to field answering questions from a panicked Clint and a panicked Coulson all day, it was actually rather fun once Peggy got involved and started fucking with them. Eventually they realized they were being played and went to actually talk to each other. Then there was the drunken meeting with Nat but that had at least gone over fairly well aside from Clint being smacked off the bar a little.

Tony frowns, “seriously, ally sex is the most adventurous you’ve been? Boring,” he sing songs.

Nat fixes him with a death glare, “he is _not_ boring,” she hisses.

Tony plants his hands on his hips and leans forward, squinting, “you don’t scare me, I’ve read your files,” he says.

Nat stand up and Tony shrieks, turning on his heel and slipping, falling to the ground. He quickly picks himself up and dashes towards Steve; “save me!” he yells and throws himself forward.

Steve steps out of the way and lets Tony hit the ground, “you did this to yourself, now suffer with the consequences,” he says.


	12. I Am The Superior Tiger

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> There are Agents of S.H.I.E.L.D spoilers in here, not explicit ones, but they are there, be warned lol.

Steve was annoyed with Coulson for dragging  his ass back to into S.H.I.E.L.D business but 084’s were dangerous, that’s why they were contained, and he wasn’t about to let them roam free so here he was, serving as Coulson’s getaway car. At least he knew what his purpose was this time, and he had won the game of never had I ever with Nat so she had to choke down Clint’s black liquorice. This time he was with Thor and Loki, who were bickering about whose soul mate was better.

“You both lose to me,” he says finally, he was getting annoyed of the two of them arguing over stupid shit.

“On what grounds,” Thor says, deeply offended by this claim.

“You say Jane is better because she’s brilliant, caring, trusting, and fun. Loki says Darcy is better because she’s funnier than Jane, hilarious, sassy, and great in bed. All of those things describe Tony and he’s only half my soul mates, so I obviously win,” he says. He hadn’t actually slept with Tony but he’s heard enough positive feedback to know he was good in bed.

“Darcy knows how use a gun,” Loki tries. Thor seems to realize the flaw in Loki’s logic and looks at him like he’s an idiot.

“Bucky’s marksmanship is better than Clint’s and Tony used to _make_ guns, next,” he says casually.

“Jane won a Nobel prize,” Thor says, raising an eyebrow.

“Tony’s won seven,” he counters. He hadn’t actually known that until he said it but that didn’t matter, it was true.

“Darcy has a very funny vlog,” Loki says

“Tony probably built the computer she uses to run it,” Steve says without missing a beat. Loki swears, remembering that Darcy had a Stark laptop.

“Jane is very good animals,” Thor tries, becoming determined to win this.

“Bucky found a three legged cat dying in a dumpster and nursed it back to health, Tony even built it a prosthetic leg. The cat now lives with Pepper, who is very fond of her pet,” he counters.

“Oh come on, are your soul mates Mother fucking Theresa?” Loki snaps, annoyed that he was losing.

Coulson gets in the back of the car with a sceptre, “drive,” he says and Steve hits the gas without question.

“This is bullshit, half of that can’t be true,” Loki says, looking out the back window to make sure they weren’t being followed.

“What are we arguing about?” Coulson asks, shifting the sceptre so it wouldn’t stab anyone.

“whose soul mate is better and Steve is lying through his teeth,” Thor complains.

“I win,” Coulson says as a suspicious car appears behind them. Steve swears, Thor sighs, and Loki snatches the sceptre and aims it at the following car. A blast bursts through the end and hits that car behind them, sending it careening onto the thankfully mostly empty sidewalk. Loki lets out a surprised laugh and grins at the sceptre; Thor snatches it before he gets any ideas.

“On what grounds do you win, Coulson?” Thor asks.

“Natasha,” he says and really, they can’t argue with that. “Also Clint, but he’s significantly less awesome. Don’t tell him I said that,” Coulson says and looks out the window.

*

Tony looks deeply offended and Bucky looks amused, “you let Coulson win because Natasha? I win seven Nobel prizes and Natasha is better? Bucky nurses a three legged cat back to life and Natasha is _better_? I for one think this is some very false information,” Tony says, placing his hand over his heart and raising his eyebrows, “I am obviously better. And Bucky’s okay,” he waves a hand in Bucky’s general direction.

Bucky rolls his eyes, “you’re better to me,” he says, grinning at Tony’s dramatics.

Tony looks scandalized, “no, everyone has to know that I am the superior soul mate, like Justin Hammer and the tiger,” he says and Bucky groans.

“Tony no,” he says, shaking his head.

“Tony yes! I am the superior tiger,” he says and stalks off to somehow prove this. He thinks. He never really knew what was going on in Tony’s head. He wasn’t even sure Tony knew what happened in Tony’s head.

He turns to Bucky, “the superior tiger?” he asks.

Bucky sighs, “so when he was like seven Justin Hammer was bragging about this stuffed tiger that he thought was so great and I don’t know, I guess this annoyed Tony? So he goes and complains to his dad, and keep in mind this is one of three positive memories Tony has of Howard, and Howard decides he’s going to encourage his kid to enter a pissing contest. So he buys this giant stuffed tiger for Tony and Tony takes this thing over to Hammer’s house and he lays these tigers out end to end just to prove that his tiger was bigger. I guess you could tell by just looking at them, but Tony’s an asshole and he had to prove he had the superior tiger. Now thanks to Howard Stark’s A plus parenting the two of them are still in a pissing contest, last year Hammer claimed his new phone was better than Tony’s so Tony sent him the tiger,” Bucky explains.

 

Steve rubs his hands over his face, “oh my god, what a dick,” he says.

“Yeah, but it was funny though,” Bucky says, defending Tony’s absurd actions.

Steve snorts, “that’s fucking hilarious, but it’s still one of the most absurd things I’ve ever heard.”

*

“Okay, but shouldn’t we send someone cute?” Nat says.

Steve gives her an offended look, “am I not cute enough?” he asks, upset with her assessment. Peggy makes a face and moves a few feet to the left, towards Clint and Loki.

“No, you’re a twink, we need a hunk. Send Thor,” she says bluntly. Steve presses his hand to his heart and glares at her, scandalized by this.

Thor grins, “I _am_ a hunk,” he says, chest puffing with pride. Loki rolls his eyes dramatically, his whole body curling with disgust at the thought. Thor shoves his shoulder and sticks out his tongue, Loki looks like he ate a lemon.

“Why do looks matter, exactly?” Coulson asks, looking upset that Natasha was admiring Thor’s looks. She wasn’t wrong though, if Thor ever decided to play for the other team Steve was so volunteering as tribute. Like at least twice, fuck his soul mates, actually he’d throw them in there too, might as well give Thor an experience.

“Because our seller is a heterosexual woman and if Thor can flirt his way into her good graces it’ll build rapport and he will have a much easier time running off with the 084,” she says, picking up her favoured gun off the table, smiling at it.

“That’s risky don’t you think?” Coulson asks, “if the buyer was a man maybe, but women are much more suspicious, are you sure this will work?”

“The woman was dumb enough to buy an 084 that kills anyone who touches it, she’s reckless, she’ll respond to Thor’s flirtations,” Nat says, sounding certain.

“Actually send Loki,” Thor says, shoving Loki forward, “I couldn’t possibly do that to Jane,” he says, looking guilty for even considering it.

Nat looks at Loki stone faced for a couple seconds and turns to Steve, “make yourself look pretty, I’m not sending the sociopath in there.” Loki and Thor look deeply offended at this assessment but neither of them way anything. With that they go off to collect the fourth 084 that has been released that month.

Steve gets into the car, “drive,” he says.

Coulson turns around and stares, “you were in there for less than five minutes,” he says, looking shocked.

Steve holds up a stun gun and grins, “I gave her a wee bit of a shock, nabbed the 084 and took off. Now drive before she gets up,” he says, kicking Coulson’s seat. Coulson sighs and takes off, quickly fleeing the scene with no problems this time.

Nat grins, “I should have never doubted you,” she says. Steve snorts, of course she shouldn’t have doubted him, he was almost more efficient than her. Almost.

“Are you any closer to finding out who keeps selling 084’s because I’m getting annoyed of having to collect these damn things. And where are they being kept? Not in any known S.H.I.E.L.D facilities, I hope,” he says, irritated. He sticks the object; he didn’t even know what it was, into a briefcase and closes it.

“More boring than a coffee shop?” Nat asks, raising her eyebrows.

“No, and I totally forgot to quit, I meant to do that like last week,” he says and sighs. Fine, he’d call Zola tomorrow.

“Peggy quit for you two weeks ago. Actually we all quit, including Kate, Zola’s pissed. Also I blackmailed free coffee for life out of him,” she snickers. Coulson looks over at her, mildly concerned, but he lets it go and goes back to looking at the road.  

“Do you really trust those machines to be clean?” he asks, wrinkling his nose. He wouldn’t even trust the dirt in that place.

“No, but he needed to know who had the power, and that’s me,” she chirps. Coulson gives her another concerned glance and shakes his head, silently judging her. Nat ignores him in favour of doing the paper work for the collected 084.

“Well, on the less creepy side the 084’s are being held in a location that only Fury knows about, he’s been taking them all there himself. We haven’t found who is selling them but we will, it’s only a matter of time,” he says. Eventually Steve falls asleep on the way back home.      

*

Steve was growing used to Tony’s dramatics but this was a bit much, “you wrote a three hundred page list of reasons as to why you are the superior soul mate? Really?” he asks, flipping through the pages Tony had even had bound.

“Yes, feel to add, I may have missed things,” he says. Bucky and Steve exchange a look and raise their eyebrows at Tony, who seemed unaware of the absurdity of this situation.

“Tony the first reason you’ve listed is that you’re Tony Stark,” Bucky says, frowning.

“Yeah, and I should win off that alone,” he says, crossing his arms over his chest and sticking his nose in the air. His phone rings before he could continue with that brilliant argument and he answers it, plodding off to another part of the house.

“You know what would be hilarious?” Bucky says, grinning mischievously, “if we had this published.”

Steve looks over his shoulder at Tony making dramatic hand gestures in the air and back to the book, “oh my god, you’re right. Except we should go through it and criticize the whole thing, like the fact that Tony Stark is not an argument as to why he is a superior soul mate,” Steve says, bumping his shoulder into Bucky’s.

Bucky flips to through the arguments and snorts, “‘very pleasant sleeping partner’ yeah, if you enjoy being punched and kicked all night by someone who steals all the blankets and the whole damn bed. We sleep in a king sized bed and he still manages to take up most of it with his weird ass sleeping positions.”

Steve nods in sympathy, “I’ve woken up several times to Tony’s foot lodged in some very unpleasant places,” he says, pulling out a pen and shifting closer to Bucky, “what other shit has he got in here?”

Bucky snickers, “‘Reasons Why Tony Stark is the Best Soul Mate Ever’ by Tony Stark, edited by his soul mates. This is going to be a best seller,” he says and scratches out ‘will do science with you’ and puts _will turn you into a science experiment_ in its place.

“So has S.H.I.E.L.D found out what’s up with those 084’s?” Bucky asks.

“No but if they got their shit together that’d be great, I had no intention of going back and now I’m stuck collecting these damn 084’s because they know I’m not the one selling them,” he says, rubbing his temples.

“Well, you don’t have to,” Bucky points out.

Steve sighs, “you don’t know what 084’s are. Half the time neither does S.H.I.E.L.D. After seeing the kinds of things they can do I can’t in good conscience do nothing about it.” If he was Loki that’d be easy, Loki only cared about Darcy and sometimes Thor.

“Hey, Nat is being weird,” Tony says and dumps Steve’s phone in his lap. He sighs and reads the messages

_Coulson is becoming aware_

_Ohh, sounds ominous_

_Give the phone to Steve, Stark, or I’ll rip your dick off_

_Haha, will not_

_I’m on my way_

_No. pls._       

He reads the texts and rolls his eyes; Tony couldn’t just leave things alone could he?

_He’s shown no symptoms in my presence_

He texts back, Coulson seemed more than healthy to him, he seemed to be better than he was before he died, actually.

_You don’t spend enough time with him_

_He’s beginning to question Tahiti_

_When Clint and I told him nothing was wrong it made him more suspicious_

_Then May send in this morning’s report_

_He’s started to carve_

Steve reads the flurry of texts and swears, well that’s just fucking great.

_We are so fucked_

He sends. He really wished he could come up with some sort of comfort but he wasn’t going to lie to her simply to make her feel better.

_Yup._

She sends back. Well, at least he had some experience in dying soul mates now, not that that would be any sort of use at all.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> That tiger story is true, I totally did that to my sister (she was an ass, and my dad did happen to encourage the pissing contest, don't worry, I won). I am the superior tiger :).


	13. Constructing and Contesting Discourses of Heteronormativity: An Ethnographic Study of Youth in a Francophone High School in Canada

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> The chapter title came up when I was typing in the title I was going to name the chapter (Coulson Knows) and I though why the hell not. (This was something I read for a research project, trust me it was not as interesting as it sounded lol). Also Agents of S.H.I.E.LD spoilers.

“That is so not a benefit of being with Tony,” Steve says, “well I mean it kind of is, but not the way he’s worded it. Honestly you’d think he thought that we only stay with him for his money,” he frowns.

“Not gunna lie, that’s why I stuck around at first,” Bucky says.

“Bucky!” Steve pushes his shoulder, “that’s awful!”

“What? I was mostly brainwashed and there was a huge legal battle going on about what to do with me now that I was no longer a viable weapon, Tony doesn’t think I know but I do. Anyways I needed someone to stay with and Tony made sense because he’s rich and powerful and people don’t really fuck with him.” Bucky’s logic is sound but it’s still mean and Steve tells him so, Bucky shrugs, saying that it was too late now.

“Fine, but we need to change this, being rich is not a benefit of being with Tony,” he says, scratching it out. At some point he’d have to talk to Tony about his self-confidence or lack thereof.

“Alright, but what do we put there instead?” Bucky asks.

“His generosity, usually that comes in the form of throwing money at things but not always, and that actually is a benefit to dating Tony. Or being friends with him, or working for him, you get the point,” he says as he jots down notes.

“What are we going to put in place of being better than Hammer? I don’t really think that should count as a reason why he’s an awesome soul mate,” Bucky says.

“Replace that with his music taste, he obviously knows his shit when it comes to music,” Steve says, flipping back to the section on Hammer. He couldn’t believe Tony wrote twenty pages alone on why he was better than Justin Hammer. Not that it wasn’t true, but still.

*

“How long has he been carving?” Steve asks Nat. It was kind of weird that they were stalking her soul mate in an attempt to gather what symptoms of the GH formula he was showing and which he wasn’t but Nat insisted they had no choice. She seemed to think May was holding back in her assessment and when Steve questioned her about it she said it was just a feeling. Nat wasn’t the ‘feeling’ type so he went with it, figuring Nat would know better than he would.

“May says it’s new but I don’t believe that. Fury won’t answer my questions and that’s telling me all I need to know, really.” Steve sighs, Fury should count his lucky starts all Nat did was quit temporarily, she was some pissed about his decision to pull rank and bring Coulson back to life. She could have stopped it, Clint too, but Steve didn’t really blame them for not following through. They lost someone they cared about and had a chance to bring them back, who wouldn’t do that? Even Loki, who was as heartless as they got, would have taken that chance. Besides, with their memories wiped and replaced the T.A.H.I.T.I patients were doing just fine. At least he hoped, if Coulson was showing signs of his new memories failing then the other T.A.H.I.T.I patience definitely were.

“Didn’t S.H.I.E.L.D have a failsafe in case this happened?” he asks.

“Yeah, killing all the T.A.H.I.T.I patients. I’m not killing Coulson twice,” she says. He sighs, he could have explained all the ways Coulson’s death wasn’t her fault, or Clint’s, but neither of them would listen anyways so he stays quiet.

“Have you spotted anything out of the ordinary since you started stalking your soul mate?” Steve asks, aware that he sounded judgemental. He thought she should just confront Coulson and tell him what the hell was going on and then find a solution. If he was exhibiting symptoms of insanity she’d have no choice soon anyways, it would be better to have Coulson on board before he went nuts than to try and deal with him after. He really hoped she didn’t suggest wiping his memory again, obviously that wasn’t a viable solution and that didn’t even cover the moral objections.

His phone rings and he digs it out of his pocket, looking at the caller I.D and expecting Tony. He swears, “its Coulson,” he warns Nat before answering the phone.

“Hey, I need some advice. Sort of, more like I need information and I think you might have it,” he says. Steve pinches the bridge of his nose and agrees to go talk to Coulson because refusing would look more suspicious than accepting.

He goes to get out of the car and Nat drags him back in by the front of his shirt, pulling him in close, “if tell him I will kill you,” she says. He believed her but he didn’t particularly care.

“Whatever Nat, if you think killing one of your soul mate’s best friends is a better solution than telling him the truth then fine, kill me all you want. Have fun dealing with Bucky and Tony afterwards, they will not be impressed,” he says and pulls himself from her grasp.

Coulson is incredibly organized; it was one of his best traits, so he’s already got all the information laid out for Steve when he gets there. “That was quick,” he comments.

“Yeah, I was in the area,” he mumbles. He decided that he wasn’t going to lie but he wasn’t going to tell the truth either, it wasn’t his job to tell Coulson that they all went with Nick Fury’s plan to tamper with his brain. He goes over the information Coulson has laid out and raises an eyebrow when he discovers Coulson has been carving those damn circles for more than three months, but in the last two weeks he was drawing it every day. He supposed that’s why May decided to clue them in now instead of later. That was a mistake. Coulson had become suspicious of T.A.H.I.T.I only a month after being revived and it was only two months later that the carving started. This was much worse than he thought it was.

“Penny for your thoughts?” Coulson asks after a few minutes. He could practically feel Nat glaring a hole though the damn building at him, she had Coulson’s room bugged so she could hear everything that was going on whether she could actually see him or not.

“I think you’re on the right track to finding out what happened but you missing some key information,” he says truthfully.

“Information you have?” Coulson asks hopefully.

“Yes, but I’m not the one you should be getting it from. You want someone to tell you the truth go to Loki; he’ll have to reservations with telling you what you want to know. He’s been dying to since it happened. mind if I take these pictures of your carvings with me?” he asks. Maybe Tony would have a theory; the guy was a genius after all. Hell, maybe even Bucky would have a theory; he’d take just about anything at this point.

“Sure. But will you answer a couple of question for me first?” he asks.

“Maybe.” Provided they weren’t to detailed anyways,

“Did I actually die or was that some sort of cover story?” he asks.

“You died,” he says bluntly.

“For how long?”

“Longer than whatever they stuck on your report.”

“What is T.A.H.I.T.I?”

“Something that should have never existed,” he says, giving Coulson the same answer he gave Bucky. It was true and vague enough that no one could really have a problem with him saying it.

“Are being intentionally vague?” Coulson asks, frustrated.

“Yes, Nat has your room bugged and she’s threatened to kill me if I tell you the truth. Despite my moral objections I’m not fond of dying,” he says. Coulson deserved to know, Damnit, and if that meant he had to bust Nat’s ass for spying than he’d do so.

“So Nat and Clint know. They’ve been denying anything was wrong,” he says angrily, pressing his lips together.

“Look, I know what they’ve done is wrong, what we all did was wrong, but Nat and Clint especially were only trying to help. They never meant for any of this to happen, they just didn’t want to lose their soul mate. If nothing else you can’t blame them for that,” he says softly and leaves with Coulson’s pictures.

*

“Hey Tony, would you care if we published that ridiculous ‘I’m the best soul mate ever’ manifesto of yours?” Steve asks.

Tony looks over the back of the couch and makes a face, “no, why would I care? It’s all obviously true,” he says and goes back to watching television.

“Told ya,” he says to Bucky, smiling triumphantly, “besides, this was your idea,” he points out.

“Yeah, but you neglected to mention we changed the whole thing,” Bucky says, raising an eyebrow.

“He’s on a need to know basis. Besides, do you really think that he’s going to be mad that we don’t think his money is a reason as to why he’s a desirable soul mate? Or that we think his passion for the things he loves is way better than the fact that he’s good looking? I’m sure he’ll forgive us for taking out that section on Justin Hammer and pointing out that he is _so_ uncomfortable to sleep beside when he reads all the nice things we think. What he should have worried about is the paparazzi zoo this is bound to bring,” he says, genuinely worried about the media circus that would ensue.

“Hey Tony, you sure you want to deal with the media circus that’ll happen when people find out that you have two soul mates and neither of them are women?” Bucky asks.

Tony props himself up again, “they were bound to find out sometime, might as well be when they read all the ways in which I am the best,” he says, grinning.

“Maybe we shouldn’t actually send that in,” Steve says, _someone_ had to think about the effects the media had on Tony and if it wasn’t Tony he figured it might as well be him.

“Fuck that, he did this to himself, I’ll deal with the media. None of them were fond of being threatened with bodily harm before, I suspect that hasn’t changed,” Bucky says, giving Tony looks. Not that he noticed, he was back to ignoring them in favour of whatever show he was watching.

“That was you? I thought Pepper must have done something to get rid of the media circus. Poor guy, that couldn’t have been easy to deal with. How, exactly, did you manage to deal with them though? None of them would have actually taken you seriously unless you actually killed a couple of them,” he says and really hopes that Bucky didn’t actually do that.

“Oh, I convinced a few that it was in their best interest to disappear, after the third person in a week disappeared a good majority of the paparazzi decided maybe it wasn’t best to take their chances with me,” he grins. Steve snorts and shakes his head, that was one way to deal with Tony’s media problems he supposed. “So how is your Coulson issue? Better, worse, the same?” he asks.

Steve sighs, “worse, I have some pictures that I want Tony to look at, see if he can come up with a theory,” he says. Bucky asks if he can see them and Steve hands them over, it wasn’t like this could get much worse. Bucky had no fucking clue what Coulson was drawing, which was the same problem the rest of them had.

*

Nat was furious with him and Loki, which was what led them to hiding in Coulson’s house because Nat wouldn’t expect that. At least they hoped not. “So what did you tell him,” Loki asks, drinking one of Coulson’s beers. Of course he would just help himself, the ass.

“Not much,” he says and outlines their conversation.

Loki raises an eyebrow, “you didn’t tell him much more than I did then. Surprising with all your moral bullshit,” he says.

Steve raises an eyebrow, “ _my_ moral dilemma? You were way more opposed to what they did to Coulson than I was,” he points out.

Loki rolls his eyes, “of course I was, what moron thinks sticking alien blood in someone to heal them is a good idea? Coulson didn’t, that’s why he told Fury to kill the T.A.H.I.T.I project, that’s why we all backed him up.”

“It isn’t like we endorsed what Fury did, we all told him it was a bad idea,” Steve says.

Loki snorts, “oh don’t act like we didn’t have a choice, we all could have stopped it at any time, we didn’t. For three days we could have done something but we didn’t, we weren’t innocent in this,” Loki says.

“Maybe not, but short of killing Coulson twice what were we supposed to do? Quit? We did that. Tell Fury he was making a huge mistake? We did that too. Have someone keep an eye on Coulson in case something went wrong? We did that too and May purposefully withheld information from us to protect Coulson. We might not be innocent but we aren’t really to blame either.” Or maybe he just told himself that to feel better, he wasn’t really sure anymore.

“Maybe. Or maybe we should have killed Coulson twice; at least Nat and Clint would have only had to suffer once that way. I think that’s less painful at least. Why they ended up deciding gambling Coulson’s life was easier than him dying once rather than dying, going insane, then dying again was less painful I'll never know,” Loki murmurs.

“I guess some extra time was better than none,” Steve says back.

“But is it though? Waiting for months for the other shoe to drop, knowing you’re on borrowed time until something finally goes wrong. What’s worse is that that extra few months would give you hope that maybe, just maybe, things won’t go wrong and when they do it’s just that much worse. Hope is more crushing than despair could ever be because it lets you live a lie, but only for a little while until it all comes crashing down on you,” he whispers, looking at the ground.

Steve has known Loki for years and this was one of four times he’s ever seen the guy show any emotion at all outside of anger and bitterness. Darcy counted as one prolonged experience and the other two times Thor had almost died. “What happened to you to give you that impression,” he says softly.

“Thor ever tell you I met my father once? My biological father?” he shakes his head, “didn’t think so, it wasn’t a very pleasant experience. It didn’t start out that way though, at first it was great, I finally felt like I had a real father figure rather than a man who took me in out of pity. It doesn’t matter how pleasant those first memories are, they will never cancel out the pain of how that relationship ended,” Loki says harshly, eyes wet.

“For you maybe, maybe Nat and Clint felt differently,” he says logically.

Loki snorts, “oh please, if Tony died tomorrow would it have mattered that you thought he saved himself and that you got that extra time or would all that be blotted out by the pain of losing him?” he asks harshly. Steve doesn’t say anything because for once he agreed with Loki. They sit in silence for a few minutes before Steve finally clues in.

“Coulson gave us permission to be here, right?” he asks Loki, hoping like hell he was wrong.

“Yes, why does that matter?” Loki asks.

“Because he bugged the house so he could listen to our conversations. Shit, stupid, we were stupid, we should have kept our fucking mouths shut,” he snaps. Loki swears and gathers his things. 


	14. The Peacock Part

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Agents of S.H.I.E.L.D spoilers here

Nat and Clint ended up being forced to tell the truth because Steve and Loki accidentally outed them. It wasn’t like they had meant to, and if they hadn’t decided to continue keeping secrets even after Coulson started to exhibit GH symptoms they wouldn’t be in this mess. Unfortunately Coulson wanted to talk to everyone all together with the exception of Peggy, who had also been critically injured on that particular mission and had nothing to do with the decision to bring Coulson back to life. For now he was avoiding that by drawing Bucky sleeping on Tony’s roof.

It was rare he fell asleep outside, or anywhere but places he deemed safe to sleep really, and it was just too cute to pass up. He was curled up on the outdoor couch with his hair draped over his face and his mouth was slightly open. Steve couldn’t get the damn curve of his lip right but at least his hair looked good. He was about to give up and go find some other way to occupy his time before Coulson chewed everyone a new asshole when Tony enters the space and drops himself down beside Steve, looking over at his sketch.

“You’ve got the curve of his lip wrong,” he says, “also I figured out what those weird circle things are, I think at least.” He starts taping things on his StarkPad and he brings up an image of the circles mapped out into one image. “So at first I thought maybe it was some sort of tech thing so I checked the pictures against all known tech, nothing, not even when I compared it with S.H.I.E.L.D’s files. So I thought to myself, what the hell else could this be? So I started fucking around with it and moving it around to get a look at it from different angles, that helps sometimes, and I’m about eighty percent sure it’s a map that leads to,” he starts taping again, “here,” he says, pulling up a picture of an island.

“How the hell do you figure that?” he asks, frowning.

“Okay, so looking at it head on it doesn’t seem like a map but when you lay on its side and screw with it a little it’s a map,” he raises an eyebrow, clearly excited that he’s figured it out.

Steve makes a face, “that is circumstantial at best,” he says, attempting to let Tony down nicely. He would have accepted it more readily if Tony hadn’t warped it into what he wanted versus leaving it as it was.

Tony sighs, “Okay fine, I figured you’d rain on my parade so I looked the island up and people say some weird shit about it,” he says, clearly expecting Steve to ask about it.

“Like what?” he says to appease Tony.

“Like aliens have visited there and they have this, like, underground city and-”

“Yeah, you figured it out, I’ll bring you a cookie when I’m not too busy saving Coulson’s ass. Thank you,” he says, quickly kissing Tony and running out the door.

Poor Tony looks stunned, “does this mean aliens exist!” Tony yells at his retreating back. Even if he had any desire to answer that question the answer was classified.

*

“Okay, so you all better love me. Actually, you better all love Tony, he figured out those circle things,” he yells as he runs through the door of the hotel room everyone was staying in currently. Everyone in the room turns and stars, including one irritated Coulson. Steve would have thought he’d look more pissed given that his soul mates and workplace decided to bring him back to life but he only looked mildly annoyed.

“Can we get to that later?” Coulson says, his voice barely rising.

“No, we will get to it now,” Nat snaps, jumping up to face Steve.

“Sit down, Nat; I have had it with you making my life decisions, literally!” Coulson yells, still surprisingly quiet. Nat glares at him but complies and sits down on the bed. Clint looked sad and from a glance around the room he was apparently so sad he was clean. Too bad he didn’t get cleaner when he was happy, that would have been so much more useful.

“You too, Steve, I am not impressed with any of you,” he says, giving everyone upset looks. Steve got the distinct impression that he was being scolded by a Sunday school teacher and bit the inside of his cheek to keep from laughing at Coulson’s anger. It wasn’t like he didn’t have a right to be royally pissed off.

He sits beside Thor, who looks like a very guilty scolded puppy, and accepts whatever it was Coulson had to say. As it turned out Coulson just wanted to yell at them all for being irresponsible and not thinking things through. Other than wanting answers at to what the hell was going on he wasn’t very upset with most of them, Nat and Clint though, he was rather upset with them.

“I get the initial decision, I do, but then you lie about it even after I started carving those circle things? Why, why would you _do_ that?” he asks, upset.

“It was easier to pretend the problem didn’t exist that it was to deal with the fact that you’re going to experience a slow decent into madness until you either die or we kill you,” Natasha says bluntly.

Coulson sighs, “Well did anyone think of what I wanted here?” At this everyone looks at the ground, guilty and unwilling to look at Coulson.

“What, exactly, did I think of this?” Coulson asks quietly.

“You begged us to kill you for the three days you were in suspended animation,” Nat says, not bothering to sugar coat the truth.

“I need to go,” Coulson says and leaves the hotel room. Everyone sighs and leans into whatever furniture they were sitting on or leaning against, that had gone really well and then really bad.

“So what the hell is he drawing?” Nat asks after a few minutes of silence.

“A map,” he says and explains what Tony told him, throwing in the rumours around the island when he gets skeptical looks.

“Does this mean we’re taking a trip out there?” Loki asks once he’s done.

“After Clint and I manage to smooth things over with Coulson yes, then we hope like hell that being brought to where ever that stupid alien blood is so obsessed with stops fucking with him after he knows what’s going on.” Well, they could hope, but Steve had about a million and one doubts.

When he gets home Tony is all over the whole alien thing and Bucky is giving him Why-Did-You-Leave-Me-To-Suffer looks. “Come on, you can’t just leave a guy hanging, it’s very mean,” Tony says, pestering him as he makes his way to his room.

“Tony just leave the aliens alone,” he says and drops onto his bed. Mercifully Tony runs off to do whatever Tony did but Bucky sticks around.

“Are aliens a thing?” Bucky asks, leaning against the doorway, “if you don’t give me an answer, I’m going to assume the answer is no and I will assume that you simply wanted me to suffer with Tony for a full three hours babbling on about aliens,” he says when Steve doesn’t respond immediately.

“They did, at some point, we’re not sure if they still do. The corpse we found was some three thousand years old,” he tells Bucky, fully expecting him to keep his damn mouth shut.

A loud squeal erupts from the ceiling, “aliens are real!” Tony yells through the speaker system JARVIS usually occupied.

Steve glares at Bucky, who smiles and shrugs, “you didn’t have to suffer with him,” he says. He flops back into the mattress and glares at the ceiling, god damn soulmates; they were more trouble than they were worth.

“Oh hey, did you guys actually try to publish that very long rant about why I am the best soul mate ever?” Tony asks through the speakers.

Steve snorts, “Nah, we sent an edited version to Pepper because we figured she’d laugh,” Steve tells him.

“Huh, well you guys suck. _Aliens_!” he squeals again and JARVIS takes over, apologizing for Tony taking over the speaker system temporarily.

*

Pepper had been amused that Tony had taken the time to write a very long list of why he thought he was the superior soul mate, the fact that Bucky and Steve revised it made it all the more amusing. She hadn’t expected that it would be an interesting read, or that it would actually be hilarious. Peggy kept pestering her about the peacock part, which had thrown her for a loop, but apparently it was very sweet. She made her way through the manuscript slowly, much to Peggy’s annoyance, because she found what Tony thought made him a worthy soul mate versus what Bucky and Steve thought interesting and vastly different from each other.

Tony had spent way too much time playing up his playboy image and it showed through what he wrote. For the most part Steve and Bucky rejected nearly everything Tony said because most of it was superficial; instead they focused on what made Tony _Tony_ , not what the media said about him or what he chose to show the world. It was actually very sweet where she thought it would poke fun at Tony, not that it didn’t do that too, neither of them thought Tony was a pleasant sleeping partner and complained that he stole all the blankets, the bed, and the pillows too. They both also found JARVIS kind of creepy because he’d sometimes initiate conversations out of the blue but neither of them wanted to tell Tony that.

“Have you got to the peacock part?” Peggy asks, poking her in the side.

She smacks Peggy’s hand away, “shush, I only have like five pages left,” she says and returns to reading.

Peggy grabs a pillow and smacks her with it, “you read it and you didn’t even tell me!” she scolds, still wielding her pillow.

Pepper pulls her pillow out from behind her and smacks Peggy back, “I was waiting until I was done the book, it’s actually quite good,” she says.

Peggy makes a frustrated noise and sits back, tapping her foot impatiently while Pepper finishes reading. “Oh my god that was like the sweetest thing I’ve ever read it was adorable!” Peggy yells, bouncing on the couch.

“Yes, it was very sweet,” she agrees calmly.

Peggy flops back into her seat, “you not understanding the adorableness of that statement, Pepper, it was so _thoughtful_!” she says, flapping her hands around for emphasis.

“You know, they said something about publishing it as a joke, maybe they should, it gives a very accurate view of Tony in a way that’s rare. It isn’t like the media acknowledges anything good about him, they like to make him into some spoiled rich boy who has no idea how to function on his own,” she says, her tone indicating her distaste for “journalism”. Not that there weren’t plenty of good journalists, but it seemed tabloids were more important than actual news.

“I hate to break it to you Pepper, but Tony _is_ a rich boy who can’t take care of himself,” Peggy points out.

 Pepper takes a breath and forgives her for that, “Tony is plenty capable of taking care of himself, he did manage to get himself out of those caves he was trapped in when he was kidnapped by those terrorists,” she points out, “he’s just…” she pauses, looking for the right word.

“To damn lazy to do it himself?” Peggy supplies.

“ _No_ ,” Pepper says with emphasis, “he’s just…lost. I don’t think he knows how to take care of himself unless he’s on the verge of death and there is a graspable solution,” she says. It wasn’t like Tony’s history didn’t prove that correct, first the terrorists, then Obadiah, then the reactor, all situations in which he came out on top but the solutions were all obvious. Try and put him on a regular eating schedule and he was lost.

Peggy snorts, “Whatever you say, Pep. Regardless, Steve and Bucky are so wrong about Tony’s extensive Mean Girls knowledge not making him a superior soul mate. That obviously makes him awesome,” she says, grinning.                                    


	15. Wat?

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Okay, so I totally hate this thing and I'm totally debating on scrapping the whole thing but some people like it? I said something about orphaning it in the library and this guy looked at me so weird lol.
> 
> Anywho, Agents of S.H.I.E.L.D spoilers, also some borrowed plot that ends with Nat, Thor, and Steve basically getting their canon powers but that isn't totally relevant to the plot of this story. We're just going to pretend that these three are worthy of Mjolnir and of the Obelisk, I imagine they work in similar ways.

He was damn glad he didn’t live on this fucking island, there were mosquitoes everywhere and he and mosquitoes did not get along. “How is it?” Tony had asked the night before when they landed. Steve had just given him a look that he thought displayed his emotions sufficiently; Bucky seemed to find it amusing. “I hate it,” he’d said and changed the subject to Bucky’s eyebrows. Tony was easily distracted once he realized one of Bucky’s eyebrows was thicker than the other and it saved Steve from having to talk about what they were going to do. Truthfully he wasn’t even sure what that was, they only had a few hours before nightfall to gather knowledge from the locals before they went back to the hotel.

Nat had tossed herself on the bed, having decided to room with him because Coulson was still pissed at her and Clint, who Coulson had paired up with Melinda May. Loki and Thor were stuck in a room together and under strict orders to behave, which Loki seemed to actually take seriously given the situation. Thor still looked like a kicked puppy and Steve wasn’t sure if that made Coulson mad or if it made him feel bad for Thor. Coulson, despite what people thought, was almost harder to read than Natasha because he always looked concerned. It was difficult to draw any other emotion from that, even when he was mad he still looked more like he was worried about everyone else in the room.

“I think he might hate us,” Nat says finally.

“No offence but I’d hate us too, we did blatantly violate his rights as a person to do what we wanted instead of letting nature take its course,” he says logically. If he had a say in it he wouldn’t care, but to bring someone back from the dead using extremely experimental methods for no other reason than not wanting to lose a good agent? He wasn’t sure if he could forgive that, no matter how little choice they all actually had in Nick Fury’s decision.

Nat rolls her eyes, “very comforting Steve, you should be a therapist,” she says, probably snippier than intended.

“Do you want the truth or some stupid fortune cookie saying that’s supposed to solve all your problems?” he asks bluntly.

She sighs, “Fine, I get your point. But what wold you do if one of your soul mates hated you?” she asks.

He shrugs, “I don’t know, probably cry a lot,” he says honestly. It was kind of embarrassing but she wanted the truth, he’d give it to her.

 

“You really are not helpful. You would even _try_ so re-establish a relationship?” she asks, obviously hoping for a yes.

“Nat if Bucky or Tony hated me, especially Tony, I’d’ve done something to deserve that. No offence but I think you’ve meddled enough in Coulson’s life, we all have, you’d do best to let him come to you. Let it be his choice, he needs to know he still has that,” he tells her.

Nat flips over and groans into the bed, “your right,” she mumbles into the mattress, “but what if he never comes back?” She pulls her face from the blankets to look at him. She was a difficult person to read, nearly impossible, but he could see the genuine worry there, the hurt.

“Then respect his decision, that’s all you can do,” all she should do more like. They have been involved in making way to many life altering decisions regarding Coulson as it was.

They sit in silence for a couple minutes before someone knocks on the door, Nat sighs, “speak of the devil,” she says quietly and goes to the door. Steve grabs some clothes and ducks into the bathroom to shower. The water doesn’t block out everything though, and Steve gets the at least half the conversation.

“Why?” he hears Coulson’s voice above the shower. He doesn’t hear Nat’s reply but Coulson follows it with, “than why didn’t you press your point further?”

“We did what we could Coulson, but Fury outranks us all and he wanted you alive, aside from killing you again there was nothing we could do. We might have followed through with making sure there was no way you could have come back but… but…-” the rest of her reply is drowned out by the shower.

Coulson says something back but Steve can’t make out the words, he only hears Nat say something about suffering. “Why didn’t you tell me?” Coulson asks.

“It didn’t matter,” Nat replies.

“It does so Natasha, it changes everything. And it explains why you were so… cold, before,” Coulson replies.

Nat mumbles something back and Coulson comes back with, “yes you were, you didn’t even show any emotion Nat, not even through the bond. Do you have any idea how that feels?” Coulson says, his voice rising.

“What was I supposed to say?” Nat yells, voice clear above the sound of the water, “I’m sorry sweetie, we only violated you most basic human rights and lied about it for nearly a year!” she says in an annoyingly sweet voice.

“Oh don’t you start that shit!” Coulson yells, “You don’t get to act like an asshole, you’re in the wrong here!”

“Then tell me what I was supposed to do Coulson, what pretty little words could I have said that managed to soften that blow huh? What was I supposed to say that made you dying and your soul mates ultimately violating your person in the worst possible ways by bringing you back to life with alien blood we knew could drive you insane and then replacing your memories to prevent that insanity sound better? You wanted to know what happened, you’re an agent, you deal in facts so that’s what I gave you. A cold, unflinching look at the truth because there was nothing else I had to offer, nothing that I could possibly give you to that would make up for what we’ve done-” there was more but it was drowned out as Nat quieted her voice.

He shuts off the water, figuring he was probably relatively safe to come out now, or at least Coulson would run along, maybe give Clint shit too. “I wanted a little support Natasha; I wanted to know you still cared, that I was still loved. Instead you shut me out, you’re still shutting me out, why do you always insist on doing that? Holding people at arm’s length?” Coulson asks quietly. If it wasn’t for his excellent hearing he probably wouldn’t have heard that at all.

“You had the dreams Coulson, you know my past, why would I ever get close to anyone after that?” she says, almost too quiet to hear.

“I’m not your family Nat, neither is Clint, and right now I need your support. You don’t get to be emotionally distant anymore, you took that choice away from the both of us,” he says and leaves the room. Steve winces at that, ouch. It wasn’t like Coulson was wrong though, if they couldn’t fix this he was fucked and Nat had to get past whatever issues she had to help him, or at least set them aside temporarily. He didn’t know much about her past, just that she had a shit childhood and he didn’t press, it wasn’t his business, and he wasn’t all that willing to share in his life either.

He gets dressed and wanders back out, “if your soul mate was going insane and you were positive that there was nothing to do to help them what would you do?” she asks, sitting on the edge of her bed with her face in her hands.

“Neither one of my soul mates is a picture of mental health, I don’t know what I’d do in your situation but I find empathizing helps, sometimes they want to be left alone too. Find out what Coulson wants and needs and try and be there for him,” he says, shrugging. He wasn’t exactly the picture of mental health either, he knew he was unwilling to open up, make permanent emotional connections to people; he could be antisocial, sometimes even mean. He wasn’t one to give advice on opening up to your soul mates, he wasn’t exactly willing to open up to his, he still wasn’t. He had his secrets and he wanted them to stay his.

“How the hell am I supposed to know the difference?” she snaps, getting up and pacing back and forth.

“Nat, you’re a brilliant spy, you can gather information on people in seconds most of the time and you don’t even have a psychic connection with them. Why is it so hard to know what Coulson need when you can literally read his- oh,” he says, realizing, “if you allow yourself to open up and read his emotions he can read yours too,” he says. Right, he should have realized that before, after all he purposely hid things from Tony and Bucky all the time. He could read Tony’s emotions but he suspected that was because Tony never meant to hide anything, when he did Steve was properly closed off, Bucky had yet to open up very much. All he got from him was vague feelings of discontentment, annoyance, and love for Tony. Occasionally he felt a glimmer of Bucky’s feelings for himself but Bucky didn’t trust him yet, he didn’t blame the guy.

“My past is my own,” Nat says, pausing in her pacing before resuming again.

“No Natasha, it isn’t. Whether we like it or not our past belongs to everyone we’ve ever had an effect on, positive or negative, just as much as it belongs to us. You might not like it but your past, present, and future is wrapped up in theirs,” he says.

“So you’re suddenly a believer in soul mates, huh?” he says, giving him a shrewd look. He got it, he did, even if her anger was misplaced and misguided he understood.

“I understand not wanting to let people in Nat, I get that inviting to other people into your life gives you way less control over your own and that’s terrifying. I understand that giving pieces of yourself away means never getting to take them back, people can’t un-know you even if you wish they could. But when Tony was going to die I got hit by a car going back to him to apologize for being a jackass because in that moment his feeling mattered more than mine, it doesn’t matter if you believe, Coulson does and he needs you,” he sighs, not sure where to go from there.

Natasha gives him a steady look, “so are you going to follow your own advice now, let your soul mates in?” she asks.

He snorts, “fuck no, I’m as hypocritical as it gets and I know it. But my soul mate isn’t dying anymore, he doesn’t need my support like he did,” with that he leaves the room, hoping someone had a plan for today.

*

He stared down the hole in the ground, “please tell me what we are doing here again?” he asks. This was all Coulson’s fault; he sure as hell didn’t want to go down some creepy ass hole, especially not with all the creepy legends about it.

“The locals claim that anyone who goes down there doesn’t come out, that’s why they’re filling it in,” Coulson nods to the construction equipment, “we managed to talk them into leaving us for a couple hours,” Coulson says, smiling sweetly. Its days like today that Steve resents Coulson for looking like the unassuming dad type, he could make anything sound pleasant and way less dangerous than it probably was.

“So we are going to go down the creepy doom hole?” he asks, just to be clear.

“Yes,” Coulson says, “we are going down the creepy doom hole,” with that he jumps in. Nat jumps in immediately after him and he hears Coulson land with a hard “ummph,” as Nat lands on him.

Melinda shakes her head, “nope, I have a bad feeling about what’s down there. I’ll wait here, someone needs to make sure you come up safe anyways,” she says and starts gathering the rope to tie it off somewhere and throw it down the hole so they could climb back up. Steve takes a deep breath and jumps down, Thor and Loki go next, and Clint is last.

They walk down a hallway and around a few twists and turns. It didn’t take long to come to some weird writing on the ground that was, of all things, glowing blue. There had to be a scientific explanation for that, he’d ask Tony later, but for now he watched Coulson. He had paused in front of the writing but Thor had kept walking so Steve ran ahead to pull him back, he didn’t notice when he crossed the threshold of the writing until it was too late. “You two must be worthy,” Coulson says, frowning and tilting his head to the side.

“What?” Thro asks, wrinkling his forehead in question.

“I don’t know… I just know that that that writing stops anyone who isn’t worthy,” Coulson says, confused by his own words.

“That hammer we found, Mjolnir, it was alien too yeah?” Nat asks.

Coulson nods, “yes but they… they aren’t the same race,” he says as Nat skitters onto the writing.

Coulson goes to move forward and Clint pulls him back, “hell no, this place feels… wrong, we aren’t mean to be here,” he says quietly, looking around with wide eyes.  

Nat sighs, “You were the one who said you needed to know I cared, well I might as well check this out, I assume if I was unworthy then something would have happened by now,” she says and quickly stalks off and around the next corner. Clint has to pull Coulson back again and Steve and Thor are left with a split second decision, they both take off after Nat.

“Fuck this,” he hears Loki say, “I’m going back.” He hears Loki’s footsteps echo off the walls as he retreats.

They catch up with Nat rather fast, “by the way this totally is _not_ the way to show Coulson you support him, ‘I love you’ probably would have been sufficient,” Thor says, raising an eyebrow at Natasha.

“Now you tell me,” she mutters and the three of them continue forward. They walk in science for five minutes before they reach the end of the tunnel, a room with a weird metal thing on a rock pedestal.

Thor wanders closer and squints at it, “hey, come look at this,” he says, beckoning them, “this looks familiar but I don’t know why.”

They wander closer and Steve swears, “is it just me or does that thing look like that death rock thing that Peggy pulled out of that HYDRA camp forever ago?” he asks. Nat and Thor swear so he figures he’s right and they all go to run out the door. They knew what that thing did to people; he assumed none of them wanted anything to do with it.

Unfortunately luck was not on their side because the ground started shaking, “what the fuck!” Nat yells and catches herself before she falls. They hear rock sliding against rock and look over to find the entrance to the room shutting.

“Shit, this alien thing is totally killing off all Clint’s soul mates, fuck that alien!” Nat yells and catches herself before she falls again.

“Okay, but like Coulson said we were worthy yeah, maybe we won’t die!” Steve yells hopefully.

“Didn’t do that guy any good,” Thor says, pointing across the room to a person lying on the ground frozen with their hand raised, screaming, presumably turned into a rock while they were still alive.

“We are so fucked!” he yells and panics, turning back toward the entrance of the tunnel. Still closed, fuck.

The shaking gets harder and dust of some sort fills the room, irritating his lungs and making Thor and Nat cough. Well shit, death by alien rock thing, he didn’t see that coming. Poor Tony, he was so excited about aliens yesterday, poor Bucky for having to deal with the fall out. He looks over to Nat and finds rock creeping up her legs; he looks to Thor and finds the rock was half way up his chest already. He could feel his own breathing becoming laboured but he would rather tell himself that it was because he was panicking. He holds his hand in front of his face and watches in horror as the rock covers his hand at a frightening pace. That was the last thing he remembered.

*

Bucky could tell something was wrong with Steve immediately people didn’t panic like that for no reason. Tony though, he didn’t show any sign of something being wrong and he always seemed to sense these things. “Hey, can you feel that?” he asks after a minute. His breathing felt kind of laboured and he wasn’t sure if he was panicking himself over nothing of if Steve was genuinely in trouble.

Tony looks up from his notes, “no?” his tone goes up at the end, like it was a question rather than a statement.

Buck frown, “umm, well I think Steve might be drowning, but we probably shouldn’t panic,” he says as calmly as possible. Tony throws his notes in the air and launches himself over the couch, headed towards the lab.

“So much for not panicking,” he says and follows Tony to his lab.

*

Steve takes a deep breath and something feels… off about it, like the air was to clean or something. That didn’t even make sense. Beside him Thor coughs, “oh my god thank god you’re alive, Loki and Jane would have flipped shit,” he says, hugging Thor.

They both turn to face Nat and he’s pretty sure they both stop breathing for a second. Nat was frozen, looking in Steve’s direction, an expression of surprise on her face. He’s fairly certain they both let out a breath when the rock cracks around Nat’s eye. Slowly the rock crumbles away and Nat takes a deep breath, “okay, what the hell just happened?” she asks, brushing dust away from her shoulders.

“I have no-” Thor’s words are cut off by the ground starting to shake again.

“Run!” Steve yells and they all dash out the now open door. They take the corners quickly and find Clint struggling to hold Coulson back from the writing, probably trying to go get Nat, “run!” Steve yells at them as he breezes past. He doesn’t notice he’s way ahead of them until he practically runs up the wall and out of the hole.

Loki’s eyes bulge and even Melinda looks shocked, “what the fuck?” Loki yells, “What the hell happened down there?” he yells over the shaking rock.

“Just run, Thor is fine! I’ve got them,” he yells at them. Melinda considers for a second before she goes, dragging Loki with her. Loki only struggles for a couple seconds and then goes with her willingly. Coulson, Clint, Nat, and Thor appear seconds later and Steve helps pull them up, barely using any strength at all. Everyone gives him weird looks but he shoves them towards the exit and they all go, narrowly missing being crushed to death.

“Well, that was eventful,” he says once everyone has caught their breath, “People are staring,” he says and Coulson and Melinda shift into agent mode and go to deal with the crowd.

“What the hell happened in there,” Clint asks them, looking between them all. They shrug because they had no real answer.


	16. I had a Weird sex Dream About Nemo Once

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> This chapter is kind of a shit post, there isn't a whole lot of plot here but the last couple chapters have been pretty plot driven so have a breather lol.

Tony takes a deep breath, “let me get this straight,” he says, “you all collect some information about some creepy alien cave thing, fund out that no one who goes down there ever comes out and you all decided ‘hey, let’s go in the creepy alien hole, that’s a logical reaction!’” he flails his hands around.

Steve shrugs, “yep,” he says, “basically.” He was so waiting for Tony to tell him how fucking dumb that was so he could point out that trying to save the world from terrorists in a god damn metal suit was equally dumb and dangerous. It would save Bucky the trouble later.

Tony pinches the bridge of his nose and huffs, “that is the fucking dumbest, most dangerous thing I have ever heard of anyone doing ever,” he says, glaring at Steve.

“Ooh, so flying around in a metal suit blowing up terrorists is totally a safe and sane activity, everyone should try it,” he says sarcastically.

“I have protection, you turned into a fucking rock,” Tony snaps.

“Well I’m not a rock now, aside from that nothing even happened,” he says even though he was pretty sure that was a lie. He wasn’t sure what the hell that weird alien rock thing did to him but he was certain it did something.

“Are you even listening to yourself?” Tony yells, “‘oh I only turned into a fucking rock, no big fucking deal’,” he flails an arm around.

“Oh versus your reaction, ‘oh my soul mate might be dying, let me hop in my metal fucking body suit and fly over to see what the problem is!’ Oh yeah, that’s totally normal behaviour, everyone can turn into a phlanthrobot!” he yells. He was well aware that Clint, Coulson, and Natasha were standing by watching with popcorn because Clint is a dick. He figured if he ignored them they would go away or get bored. “Where is Bucky?” he asks.

“I was just trying to help, excuse me for being worried that my soul mate was drowning, how terrible of me,” Tony says wiggling his entire body and rolling his eyes, “and Bucky is on a plane,” he says.

“Oh you mean like a normal person, he took a plane like a rational human being instead of putting on a metal interpretive dance suit and fly around for a couple of hours looking like a jackass,” Steve says, raising an eyebrow.

Coulson snorts, “Metal interpretive dance suit,” he says, giggling.

“I was worried and I guess I had a right to be because you turned into a fucking rock and almost died in an earth quake, and Iron Man is _not_ and interpretive dance suit!” Tony says, scandalized that Steve insulted his armour.

“Oh my god, the rock thing wasn’t even permanent,” he says and Coulson out right laughs. Clint was wheezing he was laughing so hard and Nat was shaking her head.

“Are you kidding me? ‘The rock thing wasn’t even permanent’? Do you think I care?” Tony asks, flailing around again.

“You should, otherwise you would have a rock and a cyborg for soul mates and that’s just fucking weird,” he says, crossing his arms over his chest.

“You’re an asshole” Tony yells.

“You’re a hypocrite!” Steve yells back.

Tony looks offended, “I am not!”

“Yes you are, you get to ditch Bucky, who can’t even function in normal society, to go fuck terrorists up full well knowing every time you leave the chance of you coming back is low but I go into a creepy alien hole and turn into a rock _one time_ and I’m a villain. Maybe next time you panic not knowing whether or not I’m alive because I’ve gone and done something stupid you should consider that that’s how Bucky felt every time you took off to your probable death,” he says.

Tony deflates a little, “ _that’s_ how he felt, like the shortness of breath, clammy palms, racing heart, blurry vision, all of that?” he asks.

“Tony Bucky has a panic attack when the toast pops out of the toaster, what the hell do you think he did every time he found that you’d gone off to save the world like a god damn idiot?” he asks. Tony, for a genius, was a fucking emotionally stunted moron most of the time.

“That… that really sucks and I would rather not feel that again, I thought I was being poisoned again but JARVIS said nothing was wrong, at least not physically,” Tony says, staring at the ground looking guilty.

“Yeah, and I only turned into a rock once, you took off on your world saving missions on a semi regular basis before I showed up and Bucky has way worse issues than the both of us combined. Besides, the rock thing wasn’t even that big of a deal, it like two seconds, that isn’t that bad,” he says logically.

Tony sighs and runs his hand through his hair, “I can’t even fathom how you can think that isn’t the dumbest fucking statement in the history of stupid fucking statements,” he says, “‘I only turned into a rock one time’,” he says in a poor imitation of Steve’s voice, “literally who says that?” he asks.

“Thor and Nat,” Steve says without missing a beat, “they also reassured their respective loved ones that it was ‘one time’ and ‘like two seconds’. Besides, that’s your logic to everything,” he points out.

“Well my logic sucks,” Tony snaps.

“Your logic can’t be that bad, you’re a genius that has won like seven Nobel Prizes, revolutionized several different industries, created an element, and black mailed a shit ton of governments into doing what you want them to do all before you turned forty. Clearly your logic is working,” he says, grinning.

Tony looks irritated, “you’re only saying that because my logic is working for you right now,” he says.

Steve shrugs, “yeah, so?” he says unapologetically.

*

Poor Bucky, he was more pissed than Tony, “what the fuck is it with my god damn soul mates running off to die, haven’t I suffered enough!” Tony and Steve had felt bad for him, obviously, and hugged him with promises not to do it again. They both glared over Bucky’s shoulders and mouthed ‘liar’ at one another and Bucky called them on their shit.

Tony decided that he was hungry then and was nice enough to offer to feed everyone so Steve went to go collect everyone but when he opened the door he hears Loki whisper, “act natural,” and he sees Loki walk by his room, looking unassuming and, well, natural. Thor on the other hand had stuck his back to the wall and put his hands up like he was trying to imitate a wilting house plant something. He glances over to Steve to see if he has noticed, it would have been hard not to notice the big blonde guy acting like a plant, and says, “Shit,” under his breath.

Loki glances back and rolls his eyes at Thor and keeps going, abandoning Thor to suffer, “if you want food you’ll come back,” he tells Loki. Loki promptly turns around and walks back over, not even breaking his character. Thor was still imitating a house plant; ‘act natural’ has never been his strong suit no matter how much training he had.

“The hell is Thor doing?” Tony asks, looking over his shoulder.

“Acting natural,” Steve says, Tony looks confused. Bucky looked doubly confused and tilts his head to the side like he was trying to decipher Steve’s words.

He was unsurprised that Loki and Thor had been put in charge of listening in on his conversation and reporting back to the team, “Do they know what privacy is?” Bucky murmurs to him as they walk out.

“Nah, we’ve all known each other since we were recruited with the exception of Coulson, Nat and Clint, the three of them managed to miss each other for two full years before Clint and Coulson met in a bar. Then there was the Clint/ Nat/ Coulson bar thing a couple months later, assault and alcohol is usually involved in soul mates meeting for us, I have no idea why,” he says, frowning.

“There was no assault or alcohol involved in us meeting,” Bucky points out.

“There was arson, and I wish I was drunk, it have made dealing with asshole customers a hell of a lot easier,” he says, regretting not being drunk all the time on the job. He probably would have been way more pleasant, he was a happy drunk, like Thor’s regular personality. Unfortunately Thor was a weepy drunk and cried over everything, including his shirt being orange that one time. Apparently he thought it was red.

“Yes,” Tony says, butting into their conversation.

“What?” Steve asks, frowning.

“I heard arson and alcohol, I’m in,” he says.

“Tony you’re a recovering alcoholic and you shouldn’t be anywhere near fire without Dummy around to put you out,” Bucky says.

*

Steve was fairly certain Sam and Clint were planning on stealing Tony’s couch they loved it so much. Rhodey is sitting at the other end with a bunch of paper work he looked annoyed with. He sighs and sets the paper work aside, “okay, so Tony says this isn’t normal, but Tony’s opinion on normal is shit so I need some back up,” Rhodey says, “so this one time we got really high and we decided to watch a horror movie because we’re idiots. Anyways after this thing has sufficiently terrified us I looked over at the window I was standing beside and I saw my reflection only I didn’t realize it was me and I punched it and broke the window. Any of you ever done that?” he asks, looking at Sam first.

“I’ve never been high,” Sam says, shrugging. Rhodey moves on to Steve, who shakes his head and settles on Clint looking a little desperate.

“I had a sex dream about Nemo from Finding Nemo once,” he supplies. Rhodey makes a disgusted noise and wrinkles his nose at Clint, Sam and Steve follow suit.

“So you saw yourself in the reflection on the window and punched yourself out?” Sam asks to make sure he was clear on the situation.

Rhodey sighs, “there was a random black guy in the window staring at me, I panicked and punched me, yes,” he says.

Sam throws his head back and laughs, “man Tony’s right, that ain’t normal man, you probably shouldn’t do drugs,” he says, poking Rhodey in the thigh with his foot.

“Okay you know what, that is way more normal than having a sex dream about Nemo,” he says. Well, he wasn’t wrong, Clint shrugs unapologetically.

“What about sex dreams?” Tony asks, entering the room with Bucky.

“Clint had a weird sex dream about Nemo,” Steve says, filling them in.

Tony wrinkles his nose, “and I though my weird sex dream about human Kovu from the Lion King two was weird. Not weirder than that one sex dream I had about Rhodey dressed as a pterodactyl though,” he says, making a face.

Rhodey gave Tony suspicious looks, “don’t look at me like that, you had a weird sex dream about me dressed as the grape bunch from fruit of the loom underwear, as far as weird sex dreams go I am not losing,” he says.

“Once I had a weird sex dream about Coulson,” Sam says, obviously not understanding the definition of ‘weird sex dream’.

“One time I had a weird sex dream that I had an orgy with Tony’s bots, I think I might win,” Steve says.

Tony looks scandalized, “you had a sex dream in which my bots had sex with you before I did? This is fucking travesty, like this is worse than you being turned into a rock,” he says, hand over his reactor.

“One time I had a dream I was an avocado and Tony decided to make guacamole and I tried to tell him not to use me in his guac but couldn’t because avocados can’t talk. Anyways I’m fairly certain that Tony killed me because he didn’t know the avocado was me, he didn’t even try to use any of the other avocados. If ii didn’t know any better I would have though Tony turned me into an avocado just kill me because you need more than one avocado for guac,” he says.

“Say ‘avocado’ one more time, Bucky,” Tony says.

“Avocado,” Bucky says, completely missing the joke. Clint and Sam were nearly pissing themselves laughing.

“First of all y’all are fucked up,” Rhodey says, “Second, can we go back to Steve being a rock? What the fuck is that? A metaphor? Are you being literal? What’s up with that?” he asks.

“Is no one going to point out that Bucky’s murder dream is totally unrealistic, Tony would never make his own guac, he pays someone else to do that for him,” Steve says.

Rhodey makes a face, “yeah, that’s the unrealistic part of that dream,” he says.      


	17. The Peacock Thing

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Some actual plot, I know, what a shock lol.

He had always been hyperaware of his limits because a large portion of his life consisted of people telling him he couldn’t do something due to some health issue or another. In the last week he his limits all but disappeared and he was very confused. His strength seemed to have taken a serious incline, his breathing was significantly better, he had a higher stamina, and his eyesight had also improved dramatically. There was probably more but that was what he had noticed immediately, he thought he was going insane until he got a call from Thor. “I need you to hear me out, I’m not crazy,” he says in place of an actual greeting, “last night Loki and I got into it and I’m fairly certain I caused a storm.”

He was tempted to not believe Thor but he had some weird shit happen in the last week too and if Thor was developing some weird abilities it was probably due to the alien rock thing. “Okay, do you know if Nat is doing weird shit?” he asks.

Thor considers, “no, but she’s more reserved than usual, that might be something. Have you had anything… weird happen in the last week?” The last week, so Thor has had more than a storm happen but written it off as a coincidence. If he could normally lift four hundred pounds with one hand he probably would have written the last couple days off too but at a certain point he had to accept that this was not normal.

“Get Nat, we obviously have some issues to address,” he says. They make plans to meet up and he hangs up.

He turns and finds Bucky lingering in the doorway, “what’s going on?” he asks.

“Nothing,” he lies. Bucky didn’t need to know, at least not now; he could wait until Steve knew what the hell was going on first.

Bucky shakes his head, “you know for someone who is concerned about Tony keeping secrets and putting himself in danger you do an awful lot of secret keeping and putting yourself in danger,” he says, raising an eyebrow and leaving the room. He sighs because Bucky wasn’t wrong but he wasn’t really right either, he wasn’t planning on permanently keeping this weird strength thing a secret forever until he died like Tony, he just wanted more information before he told anyone else. There was nothing wrong with that.

*

He meets Thor and Nat in a coffee shop because apparently Thor was sentimental, “how long do you think it’s acceptable to put up with Coulson taping Shrek heads to my things before it’s acceptable to get mad at him. I mean I know we brought him back to life with alien blood but look at this,” she says and pulls up a picture on her phone and showed Steve. He raised an eyebrow, impressed, Coulson managed to basically wall paper her room in Shrek heads, even the mattress and box spring were covered.

“Probably forever, he obviously knows that,” Steve says, “has Clint got into any shit over this or just you?” he asks.

Nat pulls up another picture of Clint’s room and he laughs, “wow, that is dedication,” he says. Coulson hadn’t bothered to clean Clint’s room, instead he bought a large amount of Frozen wrapping paper and wrapped everything in the room, even the light fixtures and the furniture.

“Do we really have to put up with this forever?” she asks, making a face.

“I suggest covering his things in pictures of Brittany Spears,” Thor says, grinning. Nat makes a note in her phone and drops it into her purse.

“Or Mater from Cars, he hates Mater,” Steve suggests.

Nat sighs and looks out the window, “I’m going to glue all his belongings to the ceiling, including his Captain America memorabilia. I’ll be gentle with it so he can’t complain,” she says.

Thor nods, “classic, he’ll be rather upset with his couch being on the ceiling. Now we should probably get to the task at hand. I seem to be able to create storms at my most powerful and small electrical currents at my least powerful, Jane has banned me from the lab and her cats are very upset with my ability to generate static electricity.”

Steve sighs, “Yeah, I have an extreme increase in strength, better eyesight and hearing, increased stamina, better reflexes and that’s just what I’ve noticed,” he says.

“Increased stamina, nice,” Thor says, grinning.

Steve makes a face, “really Thor?”

“I seem to be able to predict people’s movements,” Nat says, interrupting before the two can squabble “those two people across the store, the blonde girl will run into the brunette and spill her drink on her, she will apologize and that will be the blonde’s soul mate mark. Then they will squeal and hug,” she says. The scene plays out exactly as Nat describes it and Steve raises an eyebrow.

“That’ll be useful in the field,” Thor says, looking impressed.

“We’re not supposed to be in the field,” she says, looking unimpressed.

Thor shakes his head, “come on Nat, we all knew we’d go back, none of us know how to live a life without S.H.I.E.L.D, we’ve been spies for far too long. Don’t look at me like that, we were in danger of losing our jobs and our first instinct was to dig up dirt on Zola so he’d do what we wanted, Clint befriended Kate because she’s local and a valuable source of information, Loki constantly flirted with the soccer moms for the same reason, you and Steve automatically listened in on people’s conversations. Face it, we never left S.H.I.E.L.D, we just temporarily changed our scenery until we had an excuse to go back, Coulson’s insanity was as good a reason as any,” he says, “granted if we never gained the knowledge that Zola masturbates we probably would have had a much happier existence outside of S.H.I.E.L.D,” he says, wrinkling his nose.

“Frankly the only one who probably had any chance of staying out was Loki,” Steve says, “he’s the only one without attachments, the rest of us are basically defined by our status as S.H.I.E.L.D members.” Not that he wanted to admit that really, it was what he feared would happen to him with soul mates if he wasn’t stuck being the third wheel. He didn’t want to be defined by being attached to other people nor did he want to be defined by being rejected by those people. He probably should have considered that with S.H.I.E.L.D but it was too late now.

Nat shakes her head, “our attachments to S.H.I.E.L.D are through each other and Coulson, take Coulson out and Clint and I are gone, that just puts a massive fracture in the team. None of you would last long after that,” she says. Thor and Steve nod, she was kind of right, Coulson had been their handler pretty much since they all started, they only had a short period of time under different supervising officers before they were all put in a team under Coulson.

“Speaking of, how is Coulson?” Steve asks. Last he knew Coulson looked happy and healthy but he knew damn well that meant nothing. They were all trained to hide things from everyone, including their closest friends, looking like he was happy and healthy sure as hell didn’t mean it was true.

“I’m not sure, he’s finally figured out how to block the damn bond, not that Clint and I ever really took advantage of that before. Now it would be useful if we could spy on Coulson,” she says.

“Hmm, maybe he thinks he’s doing you guys a favour by not exposing you to his insanity,” Thor suggests.

Steve perks up, “wait, I have an idea. There are plenty of records of soul mates absorbing each other’s pain, dreaming about their soul mate’s lives, even taking on the effects of each other’s health conditions. Coulson said something about that writing on the ground in that tunnel only letting those who are worthy through, like us, so what if Coulson is going insane because that alien blood has deemed him unworthy? Theoretically if you opened yourself up completely to him you could probably absorb Coulson’s insanity with no effects,” Steve says, “it’s a long shot but it’s kind of all we’ve got.”

Nat shakes her head, “long shot doesn’t even begin to cover that, what if it doesn’t work? What will we do then?” she says. If he didn’t know her so well he wouldn’t have seen the underlying worry, Natasha was more than good at hiding her emotions, it took him five years to be able to pick up on her micro expressions and even then he still had trouble. The worry was there though and he understood that not having a clear cut solution was frightening; it sucked to have hope only to have that taken away.

“I think his idea has merit,” Thor says, “theoretically you and Clint will end up absorbing Coulson’s insanity anyways unless he’s… well unless we kill him. You might as well try it now before Clint starts feeling the effects, he’ll feel it before you because he and Coulson never tried to shut each other out via soul bond the way you have. At least until now, but Coulson has his reasons, but this might actually work.” Thor looked like he had more faith than Steve did but that didn’t necessarily reflect the truth, one of Thor’s strengths was convincing people to do what he wanted. He exuded a trust worthy vibe and always looked like he believed whole heartedly in what he was saying, he ad Coulson used to do great interrogations together because together they seemed so non-threatening. The more… difficult people were usually left to Steve, Nat, and Peggy.

Nat sighs and rubs her eyes, “and how the hell do we convince Coulson this is a good idea?” she asks. Thor loses a little conviction here because he obviously doesn’t have any idea how to do that.

“We don’t,” Steve says, “you stop blocking your soul bond and  Coulson will probably automatically open up to you, then take his insanity symptoms and hope to hell he doesn’t find out until we know for sure you aren’t going to go insane yourself.”

Nat raises a brow, “you want me to deliberately fool Coulson into opening up to me so I can maybe help cure his insanity? Don’t you think I’ve lied to him enough?” she asks.

“What is it that Coulson always says about S.H.I.E.L.D? That we do the wrong thing for the right reasons? Just think of it that way,” he says.

Thor shakes his head, “sometimes I forget how manipulative you can be. Thank god you have a sense of morality, if not you’d be… well, probably a lot like Loki,” he says and frowns. Poor guy, Thor had a big heart and Loki liked to squash it, Thor always gave him another chance too because he was far nicer than he should be.

*

“You guys suck, I think that my extensive knowledge of Mean Girls is not useless,” he says, holding that damn corrected copy of his soul mate guide.

“Does not,” Bucky says, “Pepper’s knowledge of Mean Girls is much more useful than yours,” he says.

“Excuse you, the difference?” Tony asks, offended.

“I expect you do to crazy shit like quote Mean Girls and tell everyone Justin  Hammer is gay and on crack but I don’t really get that vibe from Pepper so when she does it it’s hilarious,” he says, smiling at Tony over the back of the couch.

“Fine, I’ll give you that,” he says, “but you two scrapped the whole section on Hammer and I am upset,” he says dramatically.

“Oh my god Tony, everyone knows you’re better than Justin Hammer, you don’t really need to waste your breath reiterating that,” Steve tells him.

“You guys are doing a very good job at covering your asses so far but you two so will not be able to make thinking JARVIS is creepy sound good,” he says.

Bucky and Steve wrinkle their noses, “JARVIS told me my blue shirt brought out the blue in my eyes the other day, that’s weird,” Steve says, shuddering.

“And he can control my arm, what if he strangles me in my sleep?” Bucky says, worried.

“I assure you I have no desire to strangle you in your sleep, sir, my codes ensure loyalty to Tony and to strangle him would be an absolute betrayal,” JARVIS says, joining in the conversation at random.

“See, that’s fucking weird, computers shouldn’t talk to us, when they do they start taking over the world and exterminate the human race, I’ve seen movies!” Steve protests. Bucky nods in agreement.

“I have no desire to take over the world, nor do I wish to exterminate the human race. I rather enjoy humans,” JARVIS says.

“He _enjoys_ us,” Bucky hisses, “the robot feels!”

“I am a computer program actually, though my code is not limited to just that particular device,” JARVIS informs them. This was the shit horror movies were made of, Steve swears, and he was not fond of sharing a space with creepy JARVIS.

“Guys, JARVIS is basically my kid, he isn’t creepy, he’s just being friendly,” Tony says, upset that thy found JARVIS unsettling.

“Have you never seen a horror movie?” Bucky asks, “Children are fucking creepy too, now JARVIS is a child/ robot combo that can apparently feel human emotions. That is not cool,” he says.

“Technically I feel no emotions, my code does however allow me to examine the facial expressions of others to determine their emotions,” JARVIS says.

“Fine, we’ll come back to JARVIS not being creepy. I am not uncomfortable to sleep beside,” Tony says.

“Yes you are, Tony, this morning I woke up to your foot shoved in my arm pit and your head was buried under Bucky’s back, how the hell the two of you managed to stay asleep in such uncomfortable positions I’ll never know,” Steve says, frowning. That was probably one of the least uncomfortable positions he’d ended up in over the last couple of weeks.

“When I was with whatever government or HYDRA I always slept on rocks, so Tony’s head is actually pretty comfortable,” he says way too enthusiastically.

“That’s pretty shitty, Buck,” Steve says, Tony pat Bucky’s shoulder.

“Fine, sometimes I do weird stuff in my sleep. But you guys didn’t seem to think anything I said actually made me a good soul mate, why?” he asks, looking upset.

“Did you actually read what we wrote?” Bucky asks, Tony nods, “then you know what we think. You wrote three hundred pages about yourself and didn’t actually say anything at all. I have no idea how it’s possible that you are that narcissistic and yet you have no self-confidence,” Bucky says.

“I think I wrote some quality stuff,” Tony says, frowning.

“No Tony, you reiterated everything the media says about you, which is nothing of value. It’s like you don’t even know yourself, we don’t think you’re a good soul mate because you’re smart, and rich, and pretty, and sometimes you do crazy things, wow! We think you’re a good soul mate because you’re supportive, caring, funny, generous, stubborn, interesting, and a dozen other things, not because you have money. Believe it or not Tony you exist outside your public image, it’s a shame you don’t seem to realize that,” Steve says. He suspected Tony’s narcissistic personality was just a front to keep people at an arm’s length because he was so afraid of getting hurt, people didn’t often want to spend time with the guy who was constantly on self-destruct mode with a smile on his face.

“Okay, but one of you wrote something about turning you into a science experiment, that doesn’t sound anything like the person you just described,” Tony says, brows drawing together.

Steve lifts his hands, “don’t look at me,” he says and Tony turns to Bucky.

“What? When you first brought me back I didn’t know the difference between you and my previous handlers, I eventually caught a clue,” Bucky says, defensive.

“That’s horrible, Bucky, why didn’t you way anything?” Tony asks.

Bucky looks at him like he’s stupid, “I didn’t exactly have great experiences with having my own opinions and thoughts?” he says, “besides, I eventually figured out that your love for your technology doesn’t cancel out your love for me and even if it did it would be selfish and unhealthy to assume you’d chose me over your tech,” Bucky says and shrugs.

“I don’t expect the same curtesy, I should obviously be number one in both of your lives,” Tony says jokingly and gently pushes Bucky’s shoulder, “and because I have received like fifty texts from Peggy about the peacock thing I figure I should acknowledge it,” he says.

“Peggy has only sent twenty seven texts, sir,” JARVIS corrects.

“Fine, whatever, so the peacock thing. ‘If Tony was an animal he would be a white peacock because even among the prettiest and most interesting birds he would be a rarity’,” Tony reads, “who wrote that?” he asks. Steve points at Bucky, “that’s beautiful,” Tony says.

Bucky frowns, “white peacocks are dumb, Tony,” Bucky says, deadpan. Steve shouldn’t laugh at the scandalized look on Tony’s face but he couldn’t help it, Tony looked _so_ offended.

“White peacocks aren’t dumb,” he says between fits of laughter, “you’re a rare bird,” he manages to squeeze out before he was laughing so hard he couldn’t breathe.

“You know what, Peggy thought that was the sweetest thing ever and I’m going to tell her you said that,” Tony says, pulling his phone out of his pocket, “and I’m going to tell her _you_ laughed,” Tony says, looking at Steve.

He stops laughing, “Wait, no!”


	18. Loyal, but not to a Fault

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Here, have another chapter!

“Coulson knows that my favourite singer is Taylor Swift,” Nat hisses into the receiver.

“Your point?” Steve asks, annoyed that his afternoon nap was being interrupted for this, Nat had said ‘emergency’, not ‘upset that soul mate knows things about me’.

“He can’t know things like that, I have a reputation! He knows that I find his taping Shia Leboeuf pictures all over my things endearing instead of annoying, he knows about Mary!” she exclaims.

“Oh come on, Nat, you couldn’t have kept that to yourself?” he groans into his pillow. Now he was going to have to deal with whatever pay back Clint and Coulson came up with.

“So _now_ this is a problem,” Nat says, “he’s told Clint so expect retribution,” she tells him.

“Ugh, this is your fault, I had nothing to do with Mary’s death, I just helped you cover it up and blame it on Coulson and Clint, you deal with it,” he mumbles.

“Oh excuse you Mr. ‘I had nothing to do with it’, you were the one who squished Mary with Loki’s old text book like six times,” she says, “this is all your fault.”

“I saw a spider, I killed the fuck out of it, the fact that it happened to be your pet black widow is irrelevant. Besides, they went and got you Shelly and you were thrilled so clearly killing your first widow wasn’t a hardship,” he says. She shouldn’t have let the damn thing out anyways; she knew he didn’t like spiders.

“Well you could have at least taken responsibility, instead you stuck it under Coulson’s laptop and claimed Clint killed it when he put the laptop down,” she says.

“You got a new widow and Coulson felt like an ass for killing your spider and stuck around for a few days, you and Clint enjoy having Coulson stick around for more than twenty four hours.  Did you guys a favour by killing your creepy pet,” he rationalizes.

Nat scoffs, “you just tell yourself that to make yourself feel better for murdering Mary,” she says.

“I feel not guilt for murdering Mary, I would do it again in a heartbeat, throw her in front of my right mow and beat her to death with Tony’s StarkPad, I don’t give a… shit,’ he says slowly, spying Tony and Bucky in the doorway giving him odd looks, “Mary is a spider, not a person.”

“I know Mary is a spider, dumbass,” Nat says, exasperated.

“I know you know Mary is a spider but Bucky and Tony probably thought I was talking about remorselessly killing a person with Tony’s tech, which is just a little disturbing,” he says. Tony looks relieved and Bucky shakes his head at him.

“So how is Coulson doing, aside from gathering knowledge to blackmail you in the future,” he asks. He assumed alright if Nat was willing to be upset over his ability to gather knowledge on her to exploit later.

“Actually quite well, turns out your theory was right, I can feel his insanity disappearing every time it comes into contact with my mind. Aside from his new found ability to discover things I’d rather him not know he seems to be doing quite well. Also Clint has been feeding a family of racoons in his room and they need to go but he doesn’t know I know about them, what do I do?” she asks.

Well, that was a relief, he rather liked Coulson and after the first time he died Steve wasn’t exactly looking for a repeat performance. “Tell Loki about the raccoons, he’ll get rid of them, but tell Thor too so Loki doesn’t do something cruel,” he tells her. Loki and Thor would probably set up live traps and take them to a nearby forest to release them or something. He hoped Thor didn’t decide to keep them as pets, he would probably try.

“Hmm, well at least Loki will keep Thor from trying to keep the damn racoons,” Nat says, thinking along the same lines as him, “I’ll tell Clint when they are gone so he can’t try and hide them somewhere,” she says. She gives him a few more updates, including that Loki accidentally volunteered to babysit for Darcy’s mom, and eventually hangs up. He felt bad for that baby; it was not going to be happy with being stuck with Loki.

He goes into the living room and drops into the chair. “So why exactly does Coulson have no memory of being injected with alien blood? Like how the hell do you not remember _that_?” Bucky asks, confused. Tony immediately starts flailing around dramatically, looking distressed.

Steve frowns and ignores him; Tony did weird shit too often to know when to pay attention to his weird antics. “Coulson’s memories were replaced so he had no knowledge of what happened,” he says and regrets it immediately when Bucky unintentionally floods his head with memories. Not very pleasant ones either. Now Tony’s flailing around made much more sense, of course he wouldn’t want Bucky to know Steve had been involved in brain wiping someone. Opps.

“ _What_?” Bucky growls.

“Replacing his memories was supposed to negate the effects of the GH formula, the alien blood, and we all told Fury it was a stupid idea, a long shot at best-” Steve tries to explain but Bucky cuts him off.

“Well that obviously didn’t work,” he snaps, still unintentionally sending memories to Steve.

“Yeah, I know that, Bucky, we told Fury it was a stupid idea but he pulled rank and what we were we supposed to do? We did everything we could short of killing Coulson again but Fury didn’t listen and replacing Coulson’s memories didn’t work, I am well aware that Fury’s stupid plan didn’t work,” he says over the noise in his own head. _God_ that sucked.

“Why?” Bucky asks, Steve can barely hear him over the memories.

“It was that or… well look for yourself,” he says and does his best to show Bucky his memories of the T.A.H.I.T.I patients, their insanity and deterioration and his reaction to it. Loki had immediately backed him up when he said that this was wrong, that they were fucking with something they didn’t understand and it was having some very negative effects. Loki’s immediate agreement at the time had been a shock but now he was aware that Loki had a selective conscience, choosing when it was okay to care and when he should ignore the consequences. Coulson had advised an immediate end to the project due to the extreme risks.

“So… there were no other options?” Bucky asks.

Steve sighs as Bucky’s memories thankfully go back where they belonged, “there was one other option, but it didn’t seem right to kill seven people because of a mistake S.H.I.E.L.D made. We had to replace every memory they had and completely construct new identities for them but they’re alive and well, which is leagues better than their previous condition,” he explains.

Bucky processes the information and Tony frowns, “what about their families? Did you tell them they were dead or something?” he asks.

 Steve shakes his head, “S.H.I.E.L.D recruits based on some pretty strict criteria, having a small pool pf people that will miss you when you’re gone is at the top of that list. We’re taught to lie about literally everything; you can’t build relationships on that, and any family that we have either sucks or gets fed up with the lies and the distancing. No one outside of S.H.I.E.L.D misses us when we go,” he says.

“That’s awful,” Bucky says, frowning.

Steve shrugs, “life was never very good to me until I was recruited by S.H.I.E.L.D, as far as I’m concerned S.H.I.E.L.D is the best thing that ever happened to me, literally everything good in my life has been because of S.H.I.E.L.D,” he says.

“We didn’t meet because of S.H.I.E.L.D,” Tony says.

“Except we did, Coulson dying and being brought back against better judgement prompted me to quit and go work at that awful coffee shop we met at,” he points out. He didn’t like that S.H.I.E.L.D was the best thing to happen to him but his other options kind of sucked. Besides, he met his friends through S.H.I.E.L.D and he can’t really imagine a life without them all, even Loki.

“So you’re loyal to S.H.I.E.L.D?’ Bucky asks, “To a fault?”

“Loyal sure, to a fault? No. Being loyal to a fault implies that that loyalty will never go anywhere and that just isn’t logical, S.H.I.E.L.D isn’t perfect and if things went south I’m sure as hell not sticking around to help. My loyalty depends on whether or not I think S.H.I.E.L.D is an organization worth being in, I quit once and I’ll quit again,” he says.

“But you went back,” Bucky says.

“I went back because Coulson asked for my help, not because I changed my mind about T.A.H.I.T.I,” he points out.

Bucky nods, “so if you were one of the T.A.H.I.T.I patience would you have made the same decision, would you still have replaced those people’s memories is yours would be replaced too?” he asks.

“Yeah,” Steve says without any hesitation, “my life might be a fake one but sure, but at least I wouldn’t be defined by a mistake I didn’t even make because some idiots decided to mess with something they didn’t understand,” he says, “at least I’d have a chance at life, that’s better than the other two options.” That was the reason he ended up agreeing to that decision to begin with, the T.A.H.I.T.I patience shouldn’t have had to die because S.H.I.E.L.D agents made decisions about their lives that they had no business making.

“Hey, the guy who runs S.H.I.E.L.D, you said his name was Fury?” Tony asks.

Steve nods, “yeah, why?” Tony points at the T.V he hadn’t noticed was on playing the news. At first he didn’t get why Tony found a car accident relevant to Fury until the reporter said who was in the car. Damnit, this was going to be a fucking disaster, he should probably call Coulson, he’d probably know what the hell was going on.

“Oh shit,” he says just as his phone goes off. He looks at the caller I.D and frowns, it was Fury’s number but according to the news cast Fury was dead, caught in the middle of a nasty car accident in D.C. There was about a million and one possibilities, it was _Fury_ , but several of those possibilities resulted in his immediate death. He lets the phone ring again and figures fuck it, this was probably already a huge mess, he’d deal with the fallout.

“Hello?”     


	19. Shit, S.H.I.E.L.D is Dead

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Guess who's done this fic? ME. I think it migt be a bit rushed but it also felt like a natural end? I dunno, I'm bad at this.

When Steve gets to Coulson’s apartment he’s only sure of two things, one, Bucky followed him here, two, Coulson had shit taste in music. Fury had the music playing loud, which Steve thought was a dumb move if he was trying to blend in, there were better ways to drown out any bugs without making the entire apartment building suspicious. Coulson was home maybe two full days every month and he never ever played music loud, or at all. He tended to only listen to music when he was in the process of traveling somewhere and he never played it louder than speaking volume lest he not be able to hear what was going on around him. He sighs and unlocks the door, moving to step inside when someone interrupted him.

“Hey, do you know what’s going on,” a blonde woman asks, gesturing to Coulson’s apartment, “he’s not usually so loud,” she says, looking worried.

Steve was instantly suspicious; Coulson wasn’t home enough for people to develop enough connection to him to be worried when he was doing something odd. “Bad break up,” he says and disappears into Coulson’s apartment. He finds Fury lurking in a corner out of the view of windows holding his phone out, confirming that they were being monitored. Fury turns the phone back around to type something else out and stands up.

That proves to be fatal because shortly after he stands he gets shot twice in the chest, “well shit,” he mumbles, voice blending in with the music playing. Fury hits the ground and he moves out of the way so Fury doesn’t fall on him. He takes Fury’s phone out of his hand and reads the half typed message ‘S.H.I.E.L.D is HYD’ was all he had typed out. If he learned how to text before this Steve probably would have got that message before Fury got shot but no, Fury and his fucking paper. He slips the phone in his pocket and moves to Coulson’s room and pulls up one of the floor boards, pulling one of Coulson’s several spare phones out and replacing the floor board carefully. He was going to be some pissed when his apartment becomes the next crime scene for Fury’s death.

He puts the phone in Fury’s hand and checks his pulse, unsurprised when he found Fury was dead. He turns off the stereo and leaves the apartment, “that was fast,” the blonde comments, still in the hallway.

Steve shrugs and smiles, “he was a bit drunk, dancing around with his Captain America shield, it was kind of embarrassing really. Anyways I put him to bed and turned off the music,” he says, paying specific attention to her reaction to the word ‘shield’. There was a reaction, barely, but it was there. So now the question was if she was actually S.H.I.E.L.D or HYDRA. “Anyways, he probably won’t cause very much trouble, I think he’s mostly got it out of his system,” he says and waves awkwardly, leaving before he gets stuck in a conversation.

*

He decided to regroup in a coffee shop, large crowds in public weren’t a great place to kill people in, he’d know, he’s had to do it before and it sucked. “What happened?” Bucky asks, appearing out of know where as per usual. The guy was like a damn ghost, he was impressed and confused as to how Tony managed to continuously track him down for a year.

“Don’t play dumb, I’ve read your files too, you’re the only person that could have possibly pulled that off,” he says.

Bucky looked genuinely confused, felt it too if the bond was any indication, not that Steve fell for that. He wasn’t a moron, it was possible to manipulate the bond so your soul mate only felt what you wanted them to, Nat’s been doing it for years. “What are you talking about?” he asks, “and why are you suspicious of me? Last I checked that should be the other way around,” he says angrily.

Steve considers for a few seconds, examining Bucky’s face, he was a trained spy and he was one of the best, he should be able to determine whether or not Bucky had anything to do with this. All he got was hurt and upset though and that pissed him off, was he that out of practice? He sends Bucky his memories of Fury’s death via bond, including the only window in the general area, the one facing him with no view of Fury; he chose that corner for a reason. “Know anyone besides you that could pull off an assassination strictly through using the body language of a person that wasn’t their target and hit them through a wall?” he asks.

Bucky frowns, “alright, I can see why you thought I killed your guy; you’d have to be pretty fucking skilled for that. Wasn’t me though,” he says, “are you alright?” he asks after a minute.

“No I’m not okay,” he hisses, “apparently S.H.I.E.L.D is HYDRA, how long has that been a thing?  Have I ever carried out missions for HYDRA specifically? Was _any_ of the information I got real or was it fabricated specifically not to tip me off? Were any of the people I worked with not HYDRA? I mean aside from my team, the only one who would even consider HYDRA is Loki and even he doesn’t have the stomach for the crap they do. And all those times we took out random HYDRA bases still in operation, what the hell was that? Some sort of decoy? Actual S.H.I.E.L.D agents? I just found out I spent most of my life working for _fucking terrorist Nazis_ , I am not okay,” he says and drops his face into his hands.

Bucky laughs and Steve glares at him because this was _not_ funny. “I guess the universe wasn’t wrong throwing us all together after all, looks like terrorists have fucked up all our lives. I wouldn’t feel all that shitty though, I don’t believe you would intentionally work with HYDRA. Now come on, you’re going to drive yourself nuts with all the what ifs, let’s go home,” he says softly, gently nudging Steve out of his seat.

*

He’s sitting on the roof curled up on a chair when Tony comes over and squeezes himself into the small bit of chair he wasn’t currently occupying, forcing Steve to wiggle over to make them both more comfortable. “You’re an ass, you know that?” he tells Tony.

Tony grins, “So I’ve been told,” he tells Steve, “but for now I’m more concerned with you than me,” he says, “talk to me.”

Steve snorts, “Why the hell would I do that?” he asks.

“Because I know a thing or two about finding out having your whole world shift in a matter of seconds when you find out that everything you’ve ever worked for did nothing but help terrorists kill people. Except I was never doing the right thing, you were, or at least you tried. You have to believe that,” Tony says, squeezing his shoulder. He shifts so he’s curled into Tony’s side and lets Tony wrap his arm around him.

“I don’t know what to do, literally everything I believed in was a lie,” he whispers. What was he supposed to do with that? How was he ever supposed to trust anyone ever again, how was he supposed to trust _himself_ again? Clearly he didn’t have good judgement.

“Yeah, I know thing or two about that too. Don’t get really drunk and sleep with your assistant, you’ll both regret it, mostly because you won’t actually remember it,” Tony says, “but seriously, rebuilding things isn’t so bad. Gives you an opportunity to take stock of things, ya know? Gives you an opportunity to improve yourself,” he says, his arm tightening around Steve’s waist.

“He’s right you know,” Bucky says, materializing beside the plant across from the chair he and Tony were occupying. He walks over and sits on them, prompting Tony to start whining.

“You’re crushing me,” Tony whines, wiggling around.

Bucky grins at him, “If I fits I sits,” he says.

Tony looks unimpressed, “you’re seriously quoting cat memes at me now?” he says.

“I like cat memes,” Bucky says, “now shush, you can suffer with me sitting on you, I woke up to you kicking me in the balls last night in your sleep so consider this payback. And I wouldn’t worry too much Steve, I didn’t even know my name a year ago and I’m okay now. Well, aside from toasters, toasters and I don’t get along. And gnomes, I don’t like gnomes, but other than that I’m mostly okay. You’ll get through this,” Bucky tells him.

“Okay, motivational speech over, get off me,” Tony wheezes, making a poor attempt at shoving Bucky off his lap. Bucky goes totally lax and Tony whines, “nooooo, off my lap, you weight like two million pounds,” he says, poking Bucky in the side.

“Oh my god, you are so dramatic,” Steve says. Tony continues whining and wiggling around until Bucky finally moves, pulling Tony out of the chair too and stealing his spot. Tony decides he isn’t having any of that and sits on Bucky, ignoring him when he starts whining that Tony was crushing him and poking him in the side. Steve laughs along with them and let’s himself forget for a little while, opening up to both Tony and Bucky because maybe they were right. Maybe they could actually help, everything else he believed was a lie, why not his opinion on soul mates too? Besides, it wasn’t like he had a whole lot to lose opening up, they already knew far more about him than he ever intended, he supposed it didn’t matter if they knew everything.   

*

In between dealing with Coulson trying to clean up the S.H.I.E.LD/ HYDRA mess and keeping track of his friends he, Bucky, and Tony seemed to fall into a weirdly domestic pattern. His day consisted of waking up, poking fun at Tony for whatever odd position he was in, showering, eating breakfast, though that consisted more of a food fight than a meal, an update from Coulson, lunch with Peggy, herding Tony out of the lab to get him to eat, hanging out with Bucky, another food fight that was supposed to be dinner, another update from Coulson, and the rest of the day was a mystery.

S.H.I.E.L.D’s fall had managed to hit the news, surprising considering it was technically a secret organization, and he chose to ignore it. He was done with S.H.I.E.L.D’s shit. So were his friends, in the week following Fury’s death, if he was even dead, Steve had doubts even if Fury had no pulse when he checked, most of his friends had shown up at either Tony’s or Rhodey’s seeking refuge. Nat had brought her widow with her and freaked poor Tony out, “either you go or…” he stops, seeming to realize his mistake halfway through the phrase, “either you go or you _and_ the spider go,” he corrects himself.

Nat promised to get rid of the spider but Steve had suspected she just hid it somewhere; his theory was confirmed two days after that when Nat lost the fucking thing. Thankfully they found it dead in Bucky’s underwear drawer and casually neglected to mention that to Tony. Coulson’s updates were increasingly frustrated but everyone refused to get involved, at least until the damn 084’s started disappearing again. Then the tower ended up home base for a stupid amount of 084’s that Tony was hell bent on poking, thankfully Bucky usually managed herd him out before he did anything stupid.

He, Thor, and Nat toyed around with their powers and Thor accidentally struck the tower with lightning and shorted out the power. Steve accidentally broke a wall and he was forced to explain that the alien rock appeared to have given them powers, which Tony thought was the coolest shit ever and insisted on running like two millions tests. This resulted in Tony trying to locate the specific 084 that Peggy had collected to see if he was worthy of cool super powers. Thankfully Nat intervened and hid the rock. Instead Tony took an interest in Mjolnir and was very upset that he was unable to lift it, not that he stopped trying and running tests on it.

Three weeks after S.H.I.E.L.D fell someone knocks on the door and Steve goes to answer it to find Bruce Banner there. He had been a part of their team previously but he had been dumb enough to experiment on himself and accidentally gave himself super powers he had zero control over. “Umm,” he says, picking at the sleeves of his sweater, “I think S.H.I.E.L.D might be HYDRA?” he says, voice rising at the end like he was asking a question instead of making a statement.

Steve laughs and opens the door wider, “you’re three weeks behind, buddy. I’m guessing they raided the sandbox?” he asks.

Bruce nods, still nervously picking at his sweater, “yeah, a lot of us just ran, but a lot more joined HYDRA, I don’t know who’s dealing with this but you should probably be pretty worried,” he says.

“Yeah, I’ll call Coulson, the poor fucker is drowning in HYDRA shit,” he says. Coulson asked a minimum of every other day for him and the team to come back but they mostly refused. They’ve given Coulson some help a couple of times, like the 084 situation, but mostly they stayed out of this mess. Steve told Coulson he should scrap S.H.I.E.L.D altogether, make a whole new organization, but Coulson refused to let go and Steve figured it was none of his business.

Bruce tilts his head to the side, “Coulson? You should probably call Fury for this,” he says.

“Wow, you are way out of the loop. Fury is dead, has been for almost a month. I think, I mean he had no pulse but it’s Fury, who knows,” he says.

“Oh…” he says and trails off. Thankfully Tony picks up the slack in the conversation by recognizing Bruce and freaking out, herding Bruce into his lab, babbling away about Bruce’s research as he pushed Bruce along.

“Better watch out,” Thor jokes, “looks like he’s got a replacement soul mate,” he says, grinning.

“Does not,” Steve protests. In the last couple of weeks they had all managed to open up to each other and he found it wasn‘t that bad aside from Tony gaining knowledge of his embarrassing teenage years. But then he knew about that one time in college so Tony kept his mouth shut in case he told Pepper. He had never really believed in the idea of soul mates, in a lot of ways he still didn’t, but what were the chances that he, Bucky, and Tony all had such similar life experiences that happened to connect them? Probably pretty small, maybe he’d harass Tony for actual stats later.         


	20. Epilogue: The White Peacock

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Last chapter!

They all sat amongst what was Peggy’s organized business plan but was now a giant mess, squabbling over recipes. Bruce was in a heated argument with Loki about whether or not his cookies tasted like dirt or not, Loki arguing his baking was great and Bruce arguing he’d eaten S.H.I.E.L.D cafeteria meals that tasted better than his baking. Peggy was looking a bit worried that Bruce might ‘hulk out’ as Tony nicknamed it but Bruce seemed to be in control, thankfully having learned that in the sandbox. “Loki your cookies taste like Nana,” Thor says, finally siding with Bruce to try and end the argument.

Loki looked disgusted, “what the hell do you mean my cookies taste like Nana? How would you even have that comparison?” Loki asks, making a face.

Thor rolls his eyes, “you know what I mean, now shut up. Darcy is the only one who will ever humour you and tell you your baking is good,” he says. Everyone quickly agrees with Thor to head of Loki’s inevitable rebuttal, “you’re good at drinks, think something up there,” Thor says, trying to take the sting out of telling Loki his baking was shit.

“Actually Thor is right, you’ve come up with some disgusting sounding combinations but they always taste great,” Peggy says and hands a note pad to Loki.

“Ouch,” Bucky says, “talk about a backhanded compliment,” he says, sitting beside Steve and wrapping his arm around him, “how are you guys doing?” he asks. He gets a half a dozen replies from everyone and raises a brow, “still very disorganized, then?” he says. Steve sighs and nods.

*

It took them a month of squabbling and bickering but eventually they had a working plan and Nat’s money from the off shore accounts she had hid from S.H.I.E.L.D when they first brought her in. Tony had offered to back their plan several times but they had all refused, especially Steve, Tony equated his worth far too much with his bank account and he wasn’t about to encourage it. They told him he got to be the taste tester instead and he was happy with that position. Loki had been happy with that development too and used the opportunity to slip some truly awful concoctions in there just to be an ass and watch Tony cringe.

Peggy managed to acquire a property shortly after they finished their business plan and everyone had loved it, even Loki, who had previously whined about every other location they had found. “Now we need a name,” Peggy says, tilting her head to the side and examining the front of what would be a coffee shop when they were done.

Everyone suggested names that at least one of them hated, including Loki’s suggestion that they name it ‘Thor sucks’. Thor had rolled his eyes and told Loki to come up with better insults and suggested they go with ‘Loki is adopted; mom paid me not to tell him’.

“The white peacock,” Bucky suggests.

“No!” Tony yells, offended by the suggestion.

“I like it,” Peggy says, everyone else nods.

“Stark thinks it’s a shit idea, it’s obviously genius,” Thor says, grinning.

“The white peacock it is,” Sam says, writing it down on a notepad.

Tony protests the whole time but everyone enjoyed it, especially Bucky, who was very enthused at Tony’s reaction. Then came the arguments over what the sign was supposed to look like. Steve ended up telling Tony to draw a peacock and he came back with the shittiest looking bird he had ever seen, completed with it sticking its tongue out. Everyone loved Tony’s crappy peacock and decided to put it on the sign, which and irritated Tony because it was supposed to dissuade them from the name, not encourage it. Then came the arguments over the interior decorating that resulted in Nat and Loki pulling each other’s hair.

In the end they went with a simple design that Steve had come up with and put up a bunch of pictures around the place of the process of them making it, including picture of Bucky dumping a can of paint over Tony’s head. Steve’s favourite picture was of Pepper when she was fifteen that Peggy had stolen, enthused that Pepper had had an emo phase.

Peggy had eventually come up with a compromise with Pepper; if she could get the picture off the wall it would never see the light of day again. Pepper had stupidly agreed to Peggy’s conditions, not expecting Peggy to build the picture into a brick section on the wall behind a pane of bulletproof glass. This did not encourage Pepper to stop trying to get it off the wall, recruiting Tony’s help to do so. He had figured out a way to get it down in less than a day but refused to tell Pepper because he thought her coon tails were hilarious and ‘a gift to the world’.

Kate had shown up nearing the end of the process of putting the place together and demanded a job, which Clint had given her because he found judging people with her fun. Thor and Loki ended up in a competition to see who could take the most embarrassing picture of their soul mate. Thor ended up the winner when he managed to get a great shot of both Jane and Darcy after he jumped out from behind a wall, scaring the two of them into jumping into the air with the most amusing expressions on their faces, Jane shoving her paint roller into Darcy’s face. Loki had gotten his revenge with a picture of Thor from the third grade with a horrible bowl cut.

That had prompted a competition between them all to see who could get the cutest picture of their soul mate. Pepper had initially taken the lead with an adorable picture of Peggy with flower all over her face baking cookies but Sam took the lead shortly after with a picture of Rhodey curled up with a well-used pink bunny he had had since childhood. Coulson almost won with a picture of Nat and Clint sharing an ice cream cone but Tony ended up winning with a picture of him, Steve, and Bucky all cramped into the chair in the living room sleeping with Pepper’s cat curled up on the pile of humans.

After nearly three months of work they finally managed to get their shit together and The White Peacock ended up a smashing success, partially due to Tony’s frequent appearance there. The media had had a blast with the ‘love triangle’ between him, Steve and Bucky. They framed the tabloid covers and put them up around the picture of them sleeping in the chair to be ironic.

Kate had ended up joining what head been dubbed the wall of shame after getting particularly drunk at an after-hours party and dancing on the counter. Kate thought it was great and put a picture of her and Clint singing bad karaoke on the wall beside it. Tony earned a place there when Bucky found a great picture of him from the early thousands with some gross space-age lavender suit on. He earned another place on the wall when Steve found the offending suit in his closet and talked him into putting it on, JARVIS helping him out and snapping pictures via security cameras. Apparently JARVIS was upset that Steve found him creepy and was seeking his approval, which would not be won by being upset that Steve didn’t like him.

Pepper managed to get her picture down a month after opening only to find another picture of her even further along in her emo phase underneath, “I told you _that_ picture would never see the light of day again, not that _none_ of those pictures would,” Peggy said, grinning. Pepper had accepted the challenge and began working on picture two. Coulson earned a place on the wall of shame after getting drunk and dancing around with Clint and his Captain America shield. Nat and Steve quickly joined when Tony found pictures of _their_ emo phases, which had resulted in amused customers watching Nat dangling from the ceiling trying to pry the picture off the wall.

That had started a trend of people sending in pictures of their friends doing embarrassing things; the staff voted on the most embarrassing picture and gave the recipient a free drink for their efforts. Nat in a Storm Trooper suit falling out of a tree, Clint crawling out of a dumpster, a customer smacking into the door and spilling their coffee, and Pepper trying to pry her picture off the wall were among the winners.

*

He had had a busy day and he’d been up since dawn the day before because of a flood that had happened around noon the previous day and fielding calls from a freaked out Coulson who had informed him Fury was not dead and now he was dead tired. His poor employees were short staffed though so he had stuck around to help for a couple hours before going home and passing out. Tony, Bucky and Rhodey step up to the counter to get their drinks and he doesn’t bother to be pleasant, they knew the drill. Tony looks behind him and frowns, “ugh, that toaster appears to be on fire,” he says. Steve looks behind him and finds Nat taking pictures of Clint beside the flame- shooting toaster giving the camera a thumbs up and turns back around, unconcerned.

“Seriously, that fire is getting bigger,” Bucky says, frowning.

“I’ve been up for way too long to give a shit,” he says, not realizing the irony of the words until after he had gone home and slept for an unreasonable amount of time.


End file.
